They drove for so many hours along those eternal roads that they lost the ability to focus on the landscape, and by the end of the day one mile faded into another. They felt as if they were marooned on earth from another planet. Only the police checkpoints at the toll booths interrupted their journey. Every time they surrendered their papers, they felt an electric charge of fear that left them sweaty and limp. The guards glanced casually at the photographs and waved them on. But at one post they were ordered out of the car and held ten minutes answering peremptory questions; the car was thoroughly searched, and just when Irene was ready to scream, certain that they had been apprehended, the sergeant gave them permission to continue.
“But be careful, there are terrorists in this area,” he warned them.
It was several minutes before they could speak. They had never felt danger so near, so tangible.
“Panic is stronger than love or hatred,” a subdued Irene admitted.
* * *
From that moment on they ridiculed their fear, making jokes to save themselves useless worry. Francisco sensed that he had discovered Irene’s only secret. Any form of shyness or embarrassment was foreign to her; she gave herself to her emotions freely, holding nothing back. But somewhere, deep inside her, there was something she was ashamed of. She blushed at weaknesses she considered to be intolerable in others, and unacceptable in herself. And the terror she had discovered in herself was a source of shame that she tried to hide from Francisco. This fear was profound and consuming and had absolutely no resemblance to the fright she had occasionally experienced, the kind of scare against which laughter had been her defense. She had never feigned bravery in the face of simple fears like the slaughtering of the pig, or a creaking door in a haunted house; she was, however, shamed by this new emotion that clung to every pore, invading her entire being, making her cry out in her sleep and tremble when she was awake. At times, the impression of nightmare was so strong that she was not sure whether she was alive dreaming, or dreaming she was alive. Those fleeting instants when he peered into the depths of her shame, her fear, were when Francisco loved her most.
Finally they turned off the main route and followed a road that wound up into the mountains to a spa that had once been famous for its miraculous waters, but, with the advent of modern pharmacopoeia, had sunk into relative oblivion. The building still retained the memory of its resplendent past when, at the turn of the century, it had welcomed the most distinguished families, and foreign guests had come from afar in search of a cure. Neglect had not destroyed the charm of the large salons with their balustrades and wainscoting, period furniture, brass lamps, and fringe- and pompom-trimmed draperies. The room Francisco and Irene were assigned was furnished with an enormous bed, an armoire, a table, and two straight-backed chairs. The electricity was cut off at a fixed hour, and after that any moving about meant carrying a candle. Once the sun went down, the temperature dropped abruptly, as always at such altitudes, and then aromatic thorn logs were set ablaze in the fireplaces. The sharp, pungent odor of dry leaves and manure being burned in the courtyard drifted in through their windows. Aside from themselves and the administrative personnel, the guests were all patients afflicted with various illnesses, or the elderly seeking relief from pain. Everything was slow and gentle, from the guests’ footsteps shuffling along the corridors to the rhythmic sound of engines pumping water and curative clay to the great marble and iron baths. During the day, a line of the hopeful crept along the lip of the precipice to the fumaroles, leaning on their canes, wrapped in pale sheets, looking like distant ghosts. Higher up on the slopes of the volcano bubbled hot springs where patients, lost in the amber fog, went to sit in the thick sulfurous vapor. At dusk a bell sounded in the hotel, and its reverberating summons rumbled across the mountainside into ravines and hidden places. It was the signal to return for the rheumatic, the arthritic, the ulcerous, the hypochondriacal, the allergic, and the incurably old. Meals were served on precise schedules in a vast dining room where air currents sang and kitchen odors danced.
“I only wish we were here on our honeymoon,” mused Irene, who was enchanted with the place and hoped the contact who was to lead them to the border would not come too soon.
Weary from the long ride, they held each other close in the elemental bed that was their fate, and immediately lost all notion of time. They were awakened by the first light of a radiant morning. Francisco was relieved to see that Irene looked much improved; she even proclaimed that she had a truck driver’s appetite. They dressed, after making love with joyous restraint, and went outside to breathe the air off the cordillera. The continuous stream of guests on their way to the thermal baths began very early. While others were concentrating on their cures, Irene and Francisco used their available hours to cherish each other with stolen kisses and eternal promises. They cherished each other strolling the rugged paths on the volcano, they cherished each other sitting on the fragrant humus of the deep forest, they cherished each other whispering amid the foggy yellow spirals of the fumaroles, until at midday a mountain guide wearing rough leather boots, a black poncho, and a wide-brimmed hat arrived, bringing with him three mounts and bad news.
“They’ve picked up your trail. We must leave right now.”
“Who was it they caught?” asked Francisco, fearing for his brother, or Mario, or some other friend.
“No one. The manager of the hotel where you stayed the night before last was suspicious, and reported you.”
“Can you ride, Irene?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling.
Francisco bound Irene’s waist firmly with a broad sash so she could more easily bear the swaying of the ride ahead. They lashed their few belongings behind the saddles, and set out, riding Indian file along a barely visible path formerly used by smugglers that would lead them to a forgotten pass between two border checkpoints. When the trail disappeared completely, swallowed up by an indomitable nature, the guide took his bearings from marks carved on tree trunks. It was not the first time—nor would it be the last—that this tortuous trail had been used to save people fleeing for their lives. Larches, oaks, and manius watched over the travelers; in some places their foliage met overhead, forming an impenetrable green dome. They rode on for hours, without stopping, and without meeting a single human being. They were alone in a damp, cold solitude like a tunnel, a green labyrinth in which they were the only adventurers. Soon they were riding past large patches of snow still unmelted from the winter. They rode into low-hanging clouds, and for a while were enveloped in ethereal foam that blotted out the world. When they emerged, there suddenly lay before them the majestic spectacle of the cordillera snaking toward infinity: purple peaks, white-crowned volcanoes, ravines and gorges whose sheer, icy walls would melt in summertime. From time to time, they glimpsed a cross marking the site where some traveler had given up the ghost, dwarfed by desolation; at those places the guide crossed himself, reverently, to appease that spirit.
The guide rode first, then Irene, and Francisco brought up the rear, never taking his eyes from his beloved, alert for any sign of fatigue or pain, but she showed no weariness. She had given herself to the slow rhythm of the mule, her eyes drinking in the wondrous landscape around them, but weeping inside. She was leaving her home. Next to her heart, beneath her clothing, she carried the small packet of soil from her garden that Rosa had sent so she could plant forget-me-nots on the other side of the sea. She thought of the magnitude of her loss. She would never again walk the streets of her childhood, or hear her language spoken as she loved it; she would not see the outline of her sweet land’s mountains at dusk; she would not be lulled by the song of its rivers; gone would be the aroma of sweet basil in her kitchen, of rain evaporating from her roof tiles. She was not only losing Rosa, her mother, her friends, her work, and her past. She was losing her homeland.
“My country . . . oh, my country,” she said, sobbing. Francisco spurred his horse and, catching up to
her, took her hand.
When the light began to fade, they decided to make camp for the night, because it was impossible in darkness to go any farther through that maze of steep grades, sheer slopes, high precipices, and bottomless ravines. They did not dare light a campfire, fearing that this close to the border there might be patrols. The guide shared the contents of his saddlebags: beef jerky, hardtack, and liquor. They huddled together beneath their heavy ponchos, and curled up within the circle of their animals, embraced like three brothers; nothing, though, could protect them from the cold penetrating their bones and hearts. All night they shivered beneath a sky as somber as mourning, as ashes, as black ice, surrounded by the sighs, the soft whistlings, the infinite voices of the forest.
Finally dawn came. Light spread like a flower of fire and slowly the darkness receded. The sky cleared and the blinding beauty of the landscape materialized before their eyes like the birth of a new world. They roused themselves, shook the frost from their blankets, stretched their stiff arms and legs, and drank the remaining liquor to restore their circulation.
“The border is over there,” said the guide, pointing to a spot in the distance.
“Then this is where we part,” Francisco said. “Friends will be waiting on the other side.”
“You should go on foot. Follow the markings on the trees and you can’t get lost. The trail is clear. Good luck, compañeros.”
They said goodbye with an embrace. The guide turned back, leading his animals, and Irene and Francisco started walking toward the invisible line dividing this vast chain of mountains and volcanoes. They felt dwarfed, alone, vulnerable, two desolate sailors adrift on a sea of mountain peaks and clouds amid a lunar silence, but they also felt that their love had taken on a new and awe-inspiring dimension, and that it would be the source of their strength in exile.
In the golden light of dawn they stopped to look for the last time at their native soil.
“Will we be back?” whispered Irene.
“We will return,” Francisco replied.
And in the years that followed, those words would point the way to their destinies: we will return, we will return. . . .
Turn the page for an excerpt from
The Japanese Lover
THE POLISH GIRL
To satisfy Irina and Seth’s curiosity, Alma began by telling them, with the lucidity that preserves crucial moments for us, of the first time she saw Ichimei Fukuda. She met him in the splendid garden at the Sea Cliff mansion in the spring of 1939. In those days she was a girl with less appetite than a canary, who went around silent by day and tearful by night, hiding in the depths of the three-mirrored wardrobe in the bedroom her aunt and uncle had prepared for her. The room was a symphony in blue: the drapes were blue, and so too the curtains around the four-poster bed, the Flemish carpet, the birds on the wallpaper, and the Renoir reproductions in their gilt frames; blue also were the sky and the sea she could view from her window whenever the fog lifted. Alma Mendel was weeping for everything she had lost forever, even though her aunt and uncle insisted so vehemently that the separation from her parents and brother was only temporary that they would have convinced any girl less intuitive than her. The very last image she had of her parents was that of a man of mature years, bearded and stern looking, dressed entirely in black with a heavy overcoat and hat, standing next to a much younger woman, who was sobbing disconsolately. They were on the quay at the port of Danzig, waving good-bye to her with white handkerchiefs. They grew smaller and smaller, more and more indistinct, as the boat set out on its journey toward London with a mournful blast from its foghorn and she, clutching the railing, found it impossible to return their farewell wave. Shivering in her travel clothes, lost among the crowd of passengers gathered at the stern to watch their native land disappear in the distance, Alma tried to maintain the composure her parents had instilled in her from birth. As the ship moved off, she could sense their despair, and this reinforced her premonition that she would never see them again. With a gesture that was rare in him, her father had put his arm around her mother’s shoulders, as if to prevent her from throwing herself into the water. She meanwhile was holding down her hat with one hand to prevent the wind from blowing it off as she frantically waved the handkerchief with her other.
Three months earlier, Alma had been with them on this same quay to wave good-bye to her brother, Samuel, who was ten years older than her. Her mother shed many tears before accepting her husband’s decision to send him to England as a precaution just in case the rumors of war became real. He would be safe there from being recruited into the army or being tempted to volunteer. The Mendel family could never have imagined that two years later Samuel would be in the Royal Air Force fighting against Germany. When she saw her brother embark with the swagger of someone off on his first adventure, Alma had a foretaste of the threat hanging over her family. Her brother had been like a beacon to her: shedding light on her darkest moments and driving off her fears with his triumphant laugh, his friendly teasing, and the songs he sang at the piano. For his part, Samuel had been delighted with Alma from the moment he held her as a newborn baby, a pink bundle smelling of talcum powder and mewling like a kitten. This passion for his sister had done nothing but grow over the following seven years, until they were forced apart. When she learned that Samuel was leaving, Alma had her first ever tantrum. It began with crying and screaming, followed by her writhing in agony on the floor, and only ended when her mother and governess plunged her ruthlessly into a tub of icy water. Samuel’s departure left her both sad and on edge, as she suspected it was the prologue to even more drastic changes. Alma had heard her parents talk about Lillian, one of her mother’s sisters who lived in the United States and was married to Isaac Belasco—someone important, as they never failed to add whenever they mentioned his name. Before this, she had been unaware of the existence of this distant aunt and the important man, and so she was very surprised when her parents obliged her to write them postcards in her best handwriting. She also saw it as an ill omen that her governess suddenly incorporated the orange-colored blotch of California into her history and geography lessons. Her parents waited until after the end-of-year celebrations before announcing that she too would be going to study abroad for a while. Unlike her brother, however, she would remain within the family, and go to live in San Francisco with her aunt Lillian, her uncle Isaac, and her three cousins.
The entire journey from Danzig to London, and then to Southampton, where they boarded a transatlantic liner to San Francisco, took seventeen days. The Mendels had given Miss Honeycomb, her English governess, the responsibility of delivering Alma safe and sound to the Belasco home. Miss Honeycomb was a spinster with a pretentious accent, prim manners, and a snooty expression. She treated those she regarded as her social inferiors with disdain, while displaying a cloying servility toward her superiors, and yet in the eighteen months she had worked for the Mendels she had won their trust. No one liked her, least of all Alma, but the girl’s opinion counted for nothing in the choice of the governesses and tutors who educated her at home in her early years. To sweeten Miss Honeycomb, her employers had promised her a substantial bonus in San Francisco, once Alma was safely installed with her relatives. The two of them traveled in one of the best cabins on the ship; initially they were seasick, and then bored. The Englishwoman did not fit in with the first-class passengers and would rather have thrown herself overboard than mingle with people of her own social class. As a result, she spent more than a fortnight without speaking to anyone apart from her young ward. Although there were other children on board, Alma wasn’t interested in any of the planned children’s activities and made no friends. She was in a sulk with her governess and sobbed in secret because this was the first time she had been away from her mother. She spent the voyage reading fairy tales and writing melodramatic letters she handed directly to the captain for him to post in some port or other, because she was scared that if she gave them to Miss Honeyc
omb they would end up being fed to the fishes. The only memorable moments of the slow crossing were the passage through the Panama Canal and a fancy-dress party when someone costumed as an Apache Indian pushed her governess, dressed up in a sheet to represent a Grecian vestal virgin, into the swimming pool.
The Belasco uncle, aunt, and cousins were all waiting for Alma on the dock at San Francisco, which was teeming with such a dense throng of Asian stevedores that Miss Honeycomb feared they had docked at Shanghai by mistake. Aunt Lillian, dressed in a gray Persian lamb coat and Turkish turban, clasped her niece in a suffocating embrace, while Isaac Belasco and the chauffeur tried to gather up the travelers’ fourteen trunks and bundles. The two female cousins, Martha and Sarah, greeted the new arrival with a cold peck on the cheek, then forgot she existed—not out of malice, but because they were of an age to be looking for boyfriends, and this blinded them to the rest of the world. Despite the Belasco family’s wealth and prestige, it wasn’t going to be easy for them to land these much-sought-after husbands, as the two girls had inherited their father’s nose and their mother’s ample outline, but little of the former’s intelligence or the latter’s kindliness. Her cousin Nathaniel, the only male, born six years after his sister Sarah, was edging into puberty with the gawkiness of a heron. He was pale, skinny, lanky, ill at ease in a body that seemed to have too many elbows and knees, but with the sad, thoughtful eyes of a big dog. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the ground when he held out his hand and muttered the welcome his parents had insisted on. Alma clung so steadfastly to his hand like a life vest that his efforts to free himself proved fruitless.