“Thank goodness,” he answered me seriously.
“Can I ask you something personal?”
“That depends.”
“I look at you, and I see a man, even though you’re old. But you treat me the same way you treat your cats. You don’t see me as a woman, do you?”
“I see you as you, Maya. That’s why I’m asking you not to come back to my bed. Never again. Are we clear on that?”
“We are.”
On this bucolic island in Chiloé, the agitation of my past seems incomprehensible. I don’t know what that inner disquiet was that used to give me no respite, why I jumped from one thing to the next, always looking for something, never knowing what. I can’t manage to clearly remember those urges and feelings from the last three years, as if the Maya Vidal of that time was another person, a stranger. I told this to Manuel in one of our rare more or less intimate conversations, when we’re alone, it’s raining outside, there’s a power cut, and he can’t take refuge in his books to escape from my chatter. He told me that adrenaline is addictive, a person gets used to living on tenterhooks, can’t do without the melodrama, which is after all more interesting than normality. He added that at my age nobody wants spiritual peace, I’m at the adventurous age, and this exile in Chiloé is a pause, but it can’t turn into a way of life for someone like me. “So in other words, you’re insinuating that the sooner I get out of your house, the better, right?” I asked him. “Better for you, Maya, but not for me,” he answered. I believe him, because when I leave, this man will feel lonelier than a clam.
It’s true that adrenaline is addictive. In Oregon there were some fatalistic guys who were very comfortable with their disgrace. Happiness is slippery, it slithers away between your fingers, but problems are something you can hold on to, they’ve got handles, they’re rough and hard. In the academy I was my very own Russian novel: I was bad, impure, and damaging, I disappointed and hurt those who loved me, my life was fucked up. On this island, however, I feel good almost all the time, as if by changing the scenery I’d also changed my skin. Nobody knows my past here, except Manuel; people trust me, think I’m a student on vacation who’s come to help Manuel with his work, a naive and healthy young girl who swims in the freezing sea and plays soccer like a man, a bit of a silly gringa. I don’t plan to disappoint them.
Sometimes during the hours of insomnia my conscience niggles me about all that I did before, but it fades at dawn with the smell of the wood burning in the stove, Fahkeen’s paw scratching at me to take him outside, and Manuel with his allergies clearing his throat on his way to the bathroom. I wake up, yawn, stretch in bed, and sigh with contentment. I don’t have to beat my chest or walk on my knees or pay for my mistakes with tears and blood. As my Popo used to say, life is a tapestry we weave day by day with threads of different colors, some heavy and dark, others thin and bright, all the threads having their uses. The stupid things I did are already in the tapestry, indelible, but I’m not going to be weighed down by them till I die. What’s done is done; I have to look ahead. In Chiloé there’s no fuel for bonfires of despair. In this house of cypress the heart is calmed.
In June 2008 I finished the academy program in Oregon, where I’d been trapped for so long. In a matter of days I could leave through the front door and would only miss the vicuñas and Steve, the favorite adviser of the female half of the student body. I was vaguely in love with him, like the rest of the girls, but too proud to admit it. Others had slipped into his room secretly at night and had been sent kindly back to their own beds; Steve was a genius at rejection. Freedom, at last. I could rejoin the world of normal beings, gorge myself on music, movies, and forbidden books, open a Facebook page, the latest thing in social networks, which we all wanted at the academy. I swore I’d never again set foot in the state of Oregon as long as I lived.
For the first time in months I thought of Sarah and Debbie, wondering what had become of them. With luck they’d have finished high school and would be in the stage of finding their first jobs. It wasn’t likely they’d go to college; they weren’t smart enough for that. Debbie was always terrible at school, and Sarah had too many problems; if she hadn’t gotten over her bulimia, she was probably in the cemetery.
One morning Angie invited me to go for a walk among the pines, which was quite suspicious, because it wasn’t her style. She told me she was satisfied with my progress, that I’d done the work on my own, the academy had just facilitated it, and now I could go on to college, although there might be a few gaps in my studies. “Chasms, not gaps,” I interrupted. She tolerated my impertinence with a smile and reminded me that her mission was not to impart knowledge—any educational establishment could do that—but something much more delicate: to give young people the emotional tools to help them realize their maximum potential.
“You’ve matured, Maya, that’s the important thing.”
“You’re right, Angie. At sixteen my plan was to marry an elderly millionaire, poison him, and inherit his fortune, and now my plan is to raise and sell vicuñas.”
She didn’t find that funny. She proposed, after beating around the bush a little more, that I should stay on at the academy as a sports instructor and assistant in the art workshop for the summer; then I could go directly to college in September. She added that my dad and Susan were getting divorced, as we already knew, and that my dad had been assigned to a Middle East route.
“Your situation is complicated, Maya, because you need stability in the transition phase. Here you’ve been protected, but in Berkeley you’d lack structure. It’s not good for you to go back into the same environment.”
“I’d live with my grandmother.”
“Your sweet grandmamma is no longer at an age to—”
“You don’t know her, Angie! She’s got more energy than Madonna. And stop calling her grandmamma—her nickname is Don Corleone, like the Godfather. My Nini raised me with the back of her hand; what more structure can you ask for?”
“We’re not going to argue over your grandmother, Maya. Two or three more months here could be decisive for your future. Think it over before you answer.”
Then I understood that my dad had made a pact with her. He and I had never been very close. In my childhood he was practically absent; he arranged things so he’d be far away, while my Nini and my Popo dealt with me. When my grandpa died and things got ugly between us, he sent me away to be confined in Oregon and washed his hands of me. Now he’s got a Middle East route, perfect for him. Why did they even bring me into the world? He should have been more careful when he was with the Laplander princess, since neither of them wanted children. I imagine even way back then there were condoms. All this passed through my head like a flash, and I rapidly arrived at the conclusion that it was useless to defy him or try to negotiate with him; he’s as stubborn as a mule when he gets something in his head. I’d have to resort to another solution. I was eighteen years old, and he couldn’t legally force me to stay in the academy. That’s why he’d sought the complicity of Angie, whose opinion had the weight of a diagnosis. If I rebelled, it would be interpreted as a behavioral problem, and with the signature of the resident psychiatrist they could keep me there by force or in another similar program. I accepted Angie’s proposition so swiftly that anyone less sure of her authority would have been suspicious, and I immediately began to prepare my long-postponed escape.
During the second week of June, a few days after my walk with Angie through the pines, one of the students started a fire by smoking in the gym. The forgotten cigarette butt set fire to a mat, and the flames reached the ceiling before the alarm went off. Nothing so dramatic or diverting had happened at the academy since it was founded. While the instructors and gardeners connected the hoses, the young people took advantage to scatter in all directions and jump around and shout, giving vent to all the energy built up over months of introspection, and when the firefighters and police finally arrived, they found a mind-blowing picture, which confirmed the widespread idea
that the place was an asylum for crazy kids. The fire spread, threatening the nearby forests, and the firefighters requested support from a light aircraft. This increased the kids’ manic euphoria, and they ran beneath the streams of chemical foam, deaf to the authorities’ orders.
It was a splendid morning. Before the smoke from the fire clouded the sky, the air was warm and clear, ideal for my escape. First I had to move the vicuñas to safety, since no one had remembered them in the confusion, and I lost almost half an hour trying to get them to cooperate; their legs were locked in fright at the smell of everything burning. Finally it occurred to me to wet a couple of T-shirts and cover their heads, and I managed to drag them to the tennis courts, where I left them tied up and hooded. Then I went to my room, put the bare essentials in my backpack—my Popo’s photo, a few bits of clothing, two energy bars, and a bottle of water—put on my best running shoes, and ran toward the woods. It wasn’t an impulse—I’d been waiting for such an opportunity for ages—but when the moment arrived I left without a reasonable plan, without identification, money or a map, with the deranged idea of vanishing for a few days and giving my father an unforgettable scare.
Angie waited forty-eight hours to call my family, because it was normal for the inmates to disappear every once in a while; they’d wander down the road, hitchhike to the nearest town, twenty miles away, enjoy a bit of freedom, and then come back on their own, because they didn’t have anywhere to go, or be brought back by the police. Those escapades were so routine, especially among recent arrivals, that they were considered a sign of mental health. Only the most apathetic and depressed ones resigned themselves meekly to captivity. Once the firefighters confirmed that there hadn’t been any victims in the fire, my absence was not a reason for particular concern, but the next morning, when all that was left of the excitement of the fire was ashes, they started looking for me in town and organizing patrols to comb the woods. By then I had quite a few hours on them.
I don’t know how I got my bearings without a compass in that ocean of pines, and zigzagged out to the highway. I was lucky—there’s no other explanation. My marathon lasted hours: I left in the morning, saw the sunset and nightfall. I stopped a couple of times to drink water and nibble on the energy bars, dripping with sweat, and kept running until the darkness forced me to stop. I crouched down between the roots of a tree for the night, begging my Popo to intercept any bears. There were lots in those woods, and they were bold; sometimes they came up to the academy looking for food, completely untroubled by the proximity of humans. We watched them through the windows, no one daring to shoo them away, while they knocked over the garbage cans. Communication with my Popo, ephemeral as froth, had suffered serious ups and downs during my stay at the academy. In the early days after his death he used to appear to me, I’m sure; I’d see him standing in the threshold of a door, on the sidewalk across the street, through the window of a restaurant. He’s unmistakable, there’s no one who looks like my Popo, neither black nor white, no one as elegant and theatrical, with his pipe, gold-rimmed glasses, and Borsalino hat. Then my drug and alcohol debacle began, noise and more noise. I was bewildered and blinded and didn’t see him again, but on certain occasions I believe he was near; I could feel his eyes fixed on my back. According to my Nini, you have to be very quiet, in silence, in an empty and clean space, with no clocks, to perceive spirits. “How do you expect to hear your Popo if you walk around plugged into a set of headphones?” she used to say.
That night, alone in the woods, I experienced the irrational fear of my childhood nights of insomnia all over again. The same monsters from my grandparents’ big house resumed their attack. Only the embrace and warmth of another being could help me to sleep, someone bigger and stronger than me: my Popo or a bomb-sniffer dog. “Popo, Popo,” I called, my heart thumping in my chest. I squeezed my eyelids shut and covered my ears to keep from seeing the shifting shadows or hearing the menacing sounds. I dozed for a while, which must have been very short, and woke up startled by a flash between the tree trunks. It took me a little while to get my bearings and realize that it could be the lights of a vehicle and that I might be near a road; then I jumped to my feet, shouting in relief, and started running.
Classes started several weeks ago, and now I have a job as a teacher, but without a salary. I’m going to pay Manuel Arias for my room and board by way of a complicated barter formula. I work at the school, and Auntie Blanca, instead of paying me directly, repays Manuel with firewood, writing paper, gasoline, licor de oro, and other amenities, like movies that don’t get shown in town because they lack Spanish subtitles or because they’re “repugnant.” It’s not her who applies the censorship, but a residents’ committee, who find American movies with too much sex “repugnant.” That adjective is not applied to Chilean movies, where the actors tend to roll around naked and moaning without the audience on this island taking much notice.
Barter is an essential part of the economy in these islands: fish are exchanged for potatoes, bread for wood, chickens for rabbits, and many services are paid for with products. The baby-faced doctor from the boat doesn’t charge, because he works for the National Health Service, but his patients still pay him with hens or knitting. Nobody puts a price on things, but everyone knows what things are worth and what’s fair and keeps track in their minds. The system flows elegantly; debts are never mentioned, neither is what’s given or what’s received. Those not born here could never fully understand the complexity and subtlety of the exchanges, but I’ve learned to pay back the endless cups of maté and tea I’m offered in town. At first I didn’t know how, because I’ve never been as poor as I am now, not even when I was begging on the street, but I realized that my neighbors appreciate me keeping the children entertained or helping Doña Lucinda dye and wind her wool. Doña Lucinda is so ancient that nobody remembers anymore what family she belongs to, and they take turns looking after her; she’s the great-great-grandmother of the island and still active, romancing the potatoes with her songs and selling wool.
It’s not essential to pay back the favor directly to the person who helped you; the favors can be cannoned off one another, as Blanca and Manuel do with my work at the school. Sometimes it’s a double or triple cannon: Liliana Treviño gets glucosamine for the arthritis of Eduvigis Corrales, who knits woolen socks for Manuel Arias, and he cashes in his copies of National Geographic for ladies’ magazines at the bookstore in Castro and gives them to Liliana Treviño when she arrives with medicine for Eduvigis, and round it goes and everybody’s happy. As for the glucosamine, I should clarify that Eduvigis takes it reluctantly, just so she won’t offend the nurse, because the only infallible cure for arthritis is rubbing with nettle leaves combined with bee stings. With such drastic remedies, it’s not strange that people here get worn down. Also, the wind and the cold harm the bones and the dampness seeps into the joints; the body tires of collecting potatoes from the earth and shellfish from the sea and the heart becomes melancholy, because children go far away. Cider and wine combat sorrows for a while, but in the end weariness always wins. Existence isn’t easy here, and for many, death is an invitation to rest.
My days have begun to get more interesting since school started. Before I was the gringuita, but now that I teach the children I’m Auntie Gringa. In Chile older people receive the title uncle or auntie, even if they’re not. Out of respect, I should call Manuel uncle, but I didn’t know that when I got here and now it’s too late. I’m putting roots down in this island—I never would have imagined it.
In the winter we start class around nine in the morning, depending on the light and the rain. I jog to school, accompanied by Fahkeen, who leaves me at the door and then goes home, where it’s warm. The day begins with the raising of the Chilean flag with everybody lined up and singing the national anthem—Pure, Chile, is your blue sky, pure breezes cross you as well—and then Auntie Blanca gives us the day’s guidelines. On Fridays she names those who’ve earned prizes or reprimands and raises our mor
ale with an edifying little speech.
I teach the children basic English, the language of the future, according to Auntie Blanca, with a textbook from 1952 in which the airplanes have propellers and the mothers, always blonde, cook in high heels. I also teach them to use the computers, which work well enough when there’s electricity, and I’m the official soccer coach, although any of these brats plays better than I do. There is an Olympian vehemence in our boys’ team, El Caleuche, because I bet Don Lionel Schnake, when he bought us the cleats, that we’d win the school championship in September, and if we lost I’d shave my head, which would be an unbearable humiliation for my players. La Pincoya, the girls’ team, is terrible, and it’s better not to mention it.
El Caleuche rejected Juanito Corrales, nicknamed “the Runt” because he’s a bit sickly, even though he runs like a hare and has no fear of getting hit by the ball. The boys make fun of him, and if they can, they beat him up. The oldest student is Pedro Pelanchugay, who has repeated several grades; the general consensus is that he should earn a living fishing with his uncles, instead of wasting the bit of a brain that he’s got learning numbers and letters that will never be much use to him. He’s a Huilliche Indian, heavyset, dark-skinned, stubborn, and patient—a good guy, but nobody messes with him, because when he does finally lose patience, he attacks like a tractor. Auntie Blanca put him in charge of protecting Juanito. “Why me?” he asked, looking at his feet. “Because you’re the strongest.” Then she called Juanito over and ordered him to help Pedro with his homework. “Why me?” stuttered the boy, who hardly ever speaks. “Because you’re the smartest.” With this Solomonic solution she solved the problem of bullying against the one and the bad marks of the other and at the same time forged a solid friendship between the two boys, who have become inseparable in both their own best interests.
At midday I help to serve the lunch provided by the Ministry of Education: chicken or fish, potatoes, a vegetable, dessert, and a glass of milk. Auntie Blanca says that for some Chilean children it’s their only meal of the day, but on this island that’s not the case; we’re poor, but we don’t lack food. My shift finishes after lunch; then I go home to work with Manuel for a couple of hours, and the rest of the afternoon I have free. On Fridays Auntie Blanca awards the three best-behaved students of the week a little yellow piece of paper with her signature, which entitles them to have a jacuzzi—that is, soak in hot water in Uncle Manuel’s wooden barrel. At home we give the prizewinning children a cup of cocoa and cookies baked by me, we make them take a shower with soap, and then they can play in the jacuzzi until it gets dark.