Passion Fruit Excerpt

(The voice of Carlos Alberto)

 

I was studying Nineteenth Century Literature at the Simón Bolívar in Caracas the first time I saw Lily.  It was Easter break.  I was standing at a honey stand on a cobblestone street of the German settlement known as Colonia Tovar, which lies hidden in the mountains some sixty kilometers west of Caracas.

          Lily, whose name I did not know at the time, wore a white sleeveless summer dress of fine muslin that fell fluttering around her narrow ankles.  Her small feet were delicately bound in flat bronze sandals with spidery straps. Her pink toes, their nails varnished in clear polish, were so alluring that I had the urgent and irrational desire to place them, one by one, in my mouth. The sunset shown through her dress, outlining her slender thighs, the gentle curve of her calves.  It caught wisps of her shoulder-length brown-black hair, spinning them into shimmering threads that swirled distractedly in the breeze.  She was looking down, rummaging in her white crochet handbag, her lashes making dark quarter-moons against the vanilla of her skin. Then, as she bent lower, digging deeper in her handbag, her hair fell across her face, and it was all I could do not to reach out and brush it back. She straightened before I could act on my insane impulse, tossing back her hair and revealing a few stray freckles on her nose. (Not freckles, birthmarks, she would say to me later.) 

          For the rest of the evening, I followed her like a detective as she walked along the lanes of the village, hiding behind my newspaper when she stopped to windowshop. She made her way to the beveled lawns of the Fritz, a middle-range inn, but more expensive than mine, and sat down on a chaise lounge in the shade, next to a couple who looked to be around sixty years of age, and whom I presumed to be her grandparents.  I was already making up stories about her by then, and continued to do so, from my perch on a stone wall that encased the grounds of the Fritz, until the sun finally faded.

          So captivated was I by this girl, that when I returned to my room that night, images of her continued to flash through my mind.  Even after several glasses of rum, even after I fell asleep, she continued to haunt me, appearing suddenly, unbidden, in my dreams and evaporating just as quickly.  Finally, around two in the morning, I arose, turned on the desk lamp, and attempted to capture the girl of my dreams in words, on paper.  Not only the way she looked, which made my heart skip a beat or two each time I visualized her, but who she was.  Throughout the night I probed, with the tip of my pen, her fears, her thoughts, hopes and desires, her darkest secrets.

          On the second day of my vacation, I woke early. I shaved and dressed with lightening speed and rushed out into the misty morning, slipping and sliding through the damp cobblestone lanes to the grounds of the Fritz. Perhaps, I thought, I would be able to catch sight of her at breakfast. I found an inconspicuous corner table in the small wood-paneled restaurant the hotel management ran for its guests. When I ordered coffee, the waiter asked me which room I was staying in, and I had to confess, that I was not a guest of the Fritz. The waiters face took on a pained and offended expression. This restaurant is for guests only, he informed me. I assured him that I was there to ascertain whether this was the hotel I wanted to stay in, that the quality of the coffee was very important to me in determining where I would stay. From his manner, I doubt he believed me. This was a family hotel, and I was clearly a young student all on my own.  It may have been the desperation in my voice that made him decide to serve me my coffee. It was a much more expensive coffee than the one I could have obtained at any kiosk on the lanes of Colonia Tovar. But it was worth it. For, a few minutes later, Lily entered the room, even more fresh and beautiful than I remembered. I remained with her--well not with her, but with her-- in view throughout most of the day. It was a rather uneventful day, during which she only made one foray into the town, to purchase a cuckoo clock, for which the artisans of the colony are famous. It did occur to me that the real cuckoo was myself, or at least that is what my friend Ricardo would say when I returned to Caracas and told him what I had been up to. But I was ecstatic in my madness, and could hardly wait to fall into bed so I could dream of the girl with the brown- black hair and rosebud toes. But again I could not fall asleep without the aid of plentiful cups of rum. 

          The next morning was Easter Sunday. I wanted to attend the eight am Mass at the chapel on the square because I thought I might see her there, and perhaps be able to create an opportunity to make her acquaintance. I stumbled, hung-over, from my lumpy bed at the Viejo Aleman, and made my way to the bathroom, where a leprous visage confronted me in the mirror above the washbasin. Could this be my face? I remembered having applied Coppertone sun block at some point during the previous day. Clearly, the application had been uneven. And now my face was covered with alternately beet red and creamy white patches.  This did not bode well for romance. I briefly considered make up.  But there would probably be no shops open on Easter Sunday. I compromised with the Panama hat my father had given me, pulling it down low over my forehead, where the worst bits of seared flesh were localized.  I looked like a gangster, but it was better than the undisguised version.

          After the Mass, while the congregation was milling about the square, I was relieved to notice that the object of my affection and heightened desire was without familial encumbrance.  I was in the process of summoning the nerve to approach her, when I heard her cry out, her mouth making a surprised and exquisite circle of pain. She had twisted her ankle on the uneven cobblestones of the church square. I sprinted to her assistance, solicitously holding her elbow, gently guiding her back to her hotel, insisting that she put her weight on me as we went. She said she didnt know how to thank me. I responded by saying that I was completely lost in Colonia Tovar and didnt know where to eat, and that if she was feeling better by evening, perhaps she could accompany me to a decent restaurant. To my delight, she agreed.

          As soon as I had her captive in a corner booth at the restaurant quaintly known as El Pequeño Aleman, I wanted to come clean. Without prologue, I admitted to her that I had stalked her for three days since my arrival.  I confessed to her how I had completely humiliated and demeaned myself by lying and pretending to be lost, too ignorant to find a restaurant where I could get a meal and a cup of coffee, even though there was one on every street corner, all of which were fairly good.  I said my friend Ricardo at the university had told me that women love men who are lost, and that I had decided I had nothing to lose. As soon as I said all this, I regretted it; I thought she would think me psychotic, dull, ridiculous, or, at the very least, mentally challenged--the biggest pendejo she had ever met.  I became quiet, staring glumly into my untouched cappuccino, as if my salvation resided in a coffee cup.

          Well, it worked, she said simply, and began chattering away about the first time she had visited Colonia Tovar when she was thirteen with her school-friend Sonia Dos Santos. I didnt know it at the time, so easy was her banter, but she told me later that whenever she is nervous, recreating her childhood has the salubrious effect of a tranquilizer.

          (And why were you nervous? I asked)

          (Because I knew I was going to sleep with you, she said)

          The Lily of my fantasies would become the inspiration for my most memorable screen character, Coromoto Sanchez, in the film The Cult of Maria Lionza. But Lily is nothing like Coromoto Sanchez, with whom I had danced in my dreams and knew intimately.  Lily, I hardly know.  Even now, after five years of marriage.  Perhaps it is as she accused me once:  that it is more the idea of Lily than Lily that I love.

 

We had been married a year before I took her to see my hometown in Mérida . On our first day there, we had lunch with my family, a raucous affair including my sisters, their spouses and children, during which everyone spoke at once. I was somewhat apprehensive about how Lily, who is an only child, would tolerate it.  But she sat at the table, turning her head this way and that, trying to catch with her small ears all the words flying randomly around the dining room, smiling with delight. And I thought how proud and relieved my father would have been, were he still alive, to have seen Lily. My trophy, irrefutable proof that in spite of my choice to pursue a career in what my father oft referred to as pansy work--teaching and writing and film--I am, after all, a man.

          The next day we walked all the way to Laguna Victoria, carrying a small, but well-stocked picnic basket and a blanket. Lily did not swim, but she said she would not mind if I wanted to take a dip myself.  I swam with strong smooth strokes, feeling the water ripple over my back, oblivious to the fact that, as my figure gradually diminished from my wifes perspective, she was becoming extremely agitated. When I turned back, she was waving her blue and green silk scarf in the air, and when I reached the shore, her eyes were rimmed in red and the features of her face taut with an anguish I could not fathom.

          But, what is wrong, mi amor? I asked her, the expression in her eyes wrenching my stomach with apprehension.

          You looked so small in the water, Lily said, forcing a smile to her lips, which had gone pale.  And then, lying on the grass with the dew seeping through the wool of the blanket, she lay her head upon my chest and began a story about the time in Puerto la Cruz that she and her friend Sonia Dos Santos ate too many raw oysters, went for a swim, developed cramps and almost drowned. Since then, Lily said, she was afraid of deep waters.

          I must confess that there have been occasions when I have considered the possibility that Sonia Dos Santos is just a figment of Lilys imagination, a delusional ploy she uses when she wants to dodge the issue. But this suspicion was laid to rest by my mother-in-law, Consuelo, who told me that Sonia had been Lilys best friend in school.  Apparently they had lost touch with one another at some stage. Precisely when and how this occurred continues to elude me.  Perhaps the girl is dead and lives on only in Lilys memory. Lily herself has never discussed it, and Consuelo, without my even noticing it, evades detail. When women dont want to answer a question, they somehow manage to make you forget you ever asked.

Women are an endless source of discovery for me.  Whenever they get together, women can summon up an abundance of joy that makes men, by comparison, seem clinically depressed.  They can do this even during times of great hardship. Just last week, I came home from work to find Lily, Luz, Amparo, Josefina and Filomena all congregated in Consuelos room, in a huddle around her on the queen-size bed. Consuelo was dying and they were laughing. Even Consuelo. Laughing in the face of death.

I watch Lily with other women, and it seems to me that she belongs to a secret kind of club where I can never be a member. I am filled with a certain wistful longing, an ache that seems to emanate in waves from the solar plexus, for this part of Lily I cannot own.

This is a crazy, incongruous, impossible desire, I know. And how can I begrudge Lily her secrets when there are parts of me too that I have kept separate?  I have, for example, never told Lily what happened with Miguel Rojas and how it changed me.

Lately, I have begun to wonder whether I myself am the delusional one. For the past twenty-four hours, I have thought I heard my mother-in-laws voice in my head.

           Men have ways of connecting with their hearts too, Carlos Alberto, Consuelo says. And I hope it is true, even though the voice of my father, who died several years ago, counters that of Consuelo, who died just three days ago.

           Heart-fart. Those are just women's stories, my father says. Dont be a fag.

           Don't listen to him, says my mother-in-law, what does he know about women?

            I am inclined to agree with her, even though I am fairly sure it is only the voices of my own conflicted psyche that I hear.

          But I think Consuelo must have known something about men's hearts if she could capture and keep that of the untamable Ismael Martinez.