Suché

Late on a Friday night the phone rang in my London flat. I stumbled across the darkened living room and grabbed the cold bacolite receiver before the third ring. My fathers familiar voice crackled down the phone but I don’t remember what he said. The conversation was over in seconds and I must have sat there on the living room floor for quite a while but I don’t remember what I was thinking. My grandmother was in a coma in the south of France, he’d be at Heathrow in the morning, I was to meet him there. When I looked at the clock it was past 2:00 a.m. I didn’t cry that night.

The next morning I got up early and took the tube to the airport. I got to the arrivals lounge forty minutes early and my father was already there – he’s the sort of person who spends the night in airport terminals the night before a morning flight and I suspected him of this when I saw him. He looked pale and worn out. We sat on orange plastic chairs and he held my hand. I felt small and I wondered if he was holding my hand because he could tell how I felt, or because he felt the same. He told me my grandmother had gone into hospital for a hip operation and had gone into a coma. He was flying straight there. I told him I’d follow as soon as I could and I watched him walk through the departure gates. On the train back I thought of him alone on the plane and in the Avis office and in his rental car.

A few days later I flew to Toulon to meet him.

 __

She hummed waltzes as she moved through the house. Melodies drifted through her head like soft strains of music floating from the open windows of a stately home on a summer night.  I could see her in a strapless chiffon evening gown standing on the stone steps laughing and talking quietly, her long neck white in the moonlight.

 __

When I arrived my father picked me up and took me to the port for lunch. He looked exhausted. I watched the sparkling water and the bright orange roofs blur together as he told me my grandmother had gotten worse during the night. I could feel tears collecting under the rim of my sunglasses. I tried to think how she would like me to behave or better yet, how she would behave.

---

She was graceful and intelligent and a little bit shy in the most polite way. Once we were looking through old photographs in her bedroom and we found a stack of pictures from a trip she’d taken with her second husband shortly after their marriage. There was a beautiful black and white photograph of her smiling coyly from behind a mountain of bubble bath. She blushed as soon as she saw it and quickly tucked it in to her pocket.

___

My heart beat loudly as I reached for the cold metal handle of her hospital room, the clinic smelled strongly of floor cleaner and soap. She was never a very physical person and it was hard to sit in the room with her worn body. Her breathing was painful to listen to – with each gasping breath came the fear that it wouldn’t be followed by another. My father and I sat there for a while in a tense silence. Then I asked him about her. He told me about the big white house where he’d lived with her in the summers, and about living on a train in Peru. As he spoke I could feel my fears lessening and her presence growing.

___

I had been working as an ‘au pair’ in Belgium during the summer of 1979. It was a difficult experience to say the least and afterwards I retired to the sanctuary of my grandmother’s house on the Cote d’Azur for a week of relaxation. During that week we were allies and best friends. In the mornings I walked by the sea, then we’d have lunch served in the dining room and she’d have a glass of beer and tell me stories. In the evenings we dressed for dinner and received guests. I’d meet them at the heavy wooden doors downstairs and lead them up the spiral stairs to the salon where she would greet them gracefully. They’d chat in French and sometimes they asked me questions. I never took my eyes off her. Some evenings there were no guests and we sat and talked in her room. She’d get out earings and scarves and dress me up in elegant outfits. We took pictures of the two of us on the roof smiling in the sunshine.

___

When we left the hospital the first night the nurses told us my grandmother wasn’t expected to make it through the night. My father had arranged for them to call us in the morning but I didn’t want her to die without my knowing. I ran back and asked the nurse to call and let us know if she died during the night. I slept in her bed that night. I dreamt the phone rang and when I answered it I said “I know.” But the phone didn’t ring. My father said he could feel his mother’s strength and determination pulling her through that night as a message to us. “She’s a determined lady,” he said.

___

When I was little I couldn’t pronounce my grandmother’s name and Dorothy became Suché. I always knew her as Suché.

___

The following day she was weaker and her breathing was slower. We sat silently in the day room while my grandmother’s best friend sat with her. We weren’t with her when she died. We had said goodbye for a long time in a lot of ways butI know we both wished then that we’d said something more. We stood in the hall outside her room after the nurse told us she was dead and my father hugged me. It occured to me suddenly that he was alone now in a way and it scared me.

___

Ten months after Suché’s death I found myself at the checkout counter in Fortnum & Masons clutching a small box of liqueur chocolates with crystalised sugar centers. Every year I searched for them and this year I’d found a really good box.

“Do you want them wrapped?” the girl asked.

“Yes,” I said, “they’re a present for my grandm –” then it hit me that she was dead. I took the box home, unwrapped it and ate the chocolates slowly, trying to imagine what it could possibly be that made my grandmother love them so much.

__

It was mid-morning when we left the hospital and the sun was shining. We crossed the street and walked through the park to the funeral home. We passed kids playing kick ball, and old men with newspapers and mothers wheeling baby carriages. It was so strange to see life carrying on as usual and I wondered how many other people had felt like this on the same trip from the hospital to the funeral home.

We were greeted in the air-conditioned doorway of the funeral home by a middle-aged man in a dark, pin-striped suit. He had heavy circles under his eyes that made him look as if he was permanently in mourning. I imagined him in a dimly lit office drawing them on with an eye pencil. My french vocabulary was strained under the weight of so many words I had never thought to learn. I watched the funeral Director’s mouth distort as he said ‘cerceuil’ and ‘tombe’. They were awful, hollow sounding words that seemed to stay on his tongue forever.

Suddenly it occurred to me that I had to call Mme. Mauger. She had been Suche’s maid, cook and companion for more than thirty years and she loved my grandmother more than anything. Mme. Mauger was a small woman whom age had bent slightly towards the earth, she had smooth, white hair and wore thick glasses with clear plastic frames. She moved silently around the house in padded shoes, responding to the call of bells discreetly hidden under the rug at Suché’s feet. She knew every detail of my grandmother’s life and business but never interfered and Suché was always ‘Madame’. Mme. Mauger lived in a small apartment attached to the house through a large creaking door that lead to the kitchen. At dinnertime table settings would appear and when we were seated, Mme. Mauger would humbly wheel in a cart with domed dishes of filet du boeuff, red tomatos in rice and sauces in a golden apple shaped bowls. Sometimes late at night I caught a glimpse of her hovering watchfully at Suché’s door.

The phone rang twice and Mme. Mauger answered softly.

“C’est fini” I said, she said nothing for a moment and then asked what time I would like dinner to be served. When we returned to the house that night I could feel her moving softly around the upstairs rooms and my heart ached. Before bed there was a gentle rap at the door. She wanted to discuss the meals for the next day. I felt like the new Mrs. DeWinter, clumsily ordering all the wrong things and trying not to impose. When we finished she indicated a small pile of neatly folded clothing on the end of the bed. The funeral Director had called and she’d taken the liberty of setting out some things for ‘Madame’ to wear. She looked at the floor. I wanted to hug her but my role as the new mistress of the house kept me in my place.

“Merci” I said briefly. She went to the closet and took out a pair of slippers and looked at them thoughtfully.

“Madame avez toujours froid au pieds,” she said handing them to me.

___

When I was 21, I took the ‘Grand Vitesse’ train south through France to Toulon. My grandmother’s driver, M. Brondello, met me at the airport. During the long drive from the station it occurred to me that she was the first member of my family to see me with a pierced nose and I dreaded the awkward silences and embarrassed looks that I imagined might follow. I respected the opinion of my fashion-conscious grandmother and I was nervous but determined. I rubbed the sweaty palms of my hands on the foam seats.

The car pulled through the gates of ‘Les Vigneaux’ and up the drive, the sharp white pebbles grinding noisily under the wheels. She stood on the steps looking serene and excited. As I got out of the car I watched her subtly tip the driver – franc notes tucked into the palm of her hand as she shook his. She turned to me as M. Brondello sped into the distance and her face smoothed into a grin “Oh,” she said “it’s so chic!” her face was lit up like a chandelier – I loved her so much then.

___

The day of the funeral was overcast and drizzling. President Mitterand was sending an envoy and he was late. He finally arrived in a long blue Mercedes. He looked like Steven Berkoff with white hair and wild, bright blue eyes that shone through the grey weather. I’m not sure what I said to him as he shook my hand but he nodded knowingly. My father and I hovered in the parking lot, drowning in a sea of french verbs as we waited for Mme. Mauger. At last she arrived and the press snapped photos of us as we walked slowly into the church. Mme. Mauger insisted on standing at the back.

___

In my grandmother’s day books I found a note she made after a party. Dinner guests had been asked to describe the person next to them. A man called John Pell described my grandmother perfectly with the following words:

An Easter Lily

A Chinese screen

Green jade

A sonata

A panther

Asparagus

A stalk of fresh celery

___

From the church a long stream of cars followed the hearse like a Chinese dragon as we drove past thrashing pine trees to the cemetery. My father and I stood arm in arm watching coloured umbrellas parade past the grey tombstones. My grandmother’s tombe had been covered by a huge, rough-hewn piece of grey granite, during the brief service the crane we’d ordered to move it hovered behind us like some prehistoric monster. The coffin slid noisily into the ground. I knew I would have to be the first to throw a handful of dirt into the grave and I dreaded the hollow sound of it hitting the wood. Instead I tore a piece of heather from a bush and tossed it in to the open grave. She loved heather. Others followed my example and the heather bush began to look slightly bedraggled. I looked at the grey graves and the red clay roofs and the blue hills. A man I didn’t know whispered “She’s with those who love her now” in my ear and I wondered if her feet were cold.

funeral in khayelitsha

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The skies darken as I twist through the dirt roads of Khayelitsha Site B. It is already starting to rain. When I get close I pull out my cell phone and push the memory button with Nomathamsanqa’s name on it. I met her for the first time a year ago when she appeared on my doorstep during a heavy rain storm wearing a bright red turban and an enormous Xhosa fabric dress. There was no question then that she would stay and no question that she would be an important part of my life. 

Normally when I visit here small sentinels watch for my car and run through the warren of shacks to warn Noma of my approach. Miniature sentinels bringing messages to the Queen. But there are no sentinels today. I phone as instructed and a few minutes later I see her distinctive figure coming towards me through the crowd that has gathered in the street. 

A yellow and white awning has been stretched over the Shebeen making an outdoor chamber big enough to house four rows of plastic chairs and the coffin. Taking my hand Nomathamsanqa leads me into the shelter. I am conscious of the fact that I am the only white person here and for several minutes am not sure how to act. Noma says nothing and I stay by her side but in a few minutes my section rises to sing and I realise it is sort of the choir. 

I get out my camera to explain my presence but hesistate, I feel painfully American, unsure of the social codes and not wishing to offend. But I realise quickly that I am the only person here having an issue. Xhosa people have no trouble expressing their emotions and no shame about being photographed doing so.

The first speaker is a handsome man of about fifty with a thin moustache. He wears a black suit with wide lapels and a black tie with white church insignia. Holding his watch in one hand he speaks quickly, navigating the clicks and dips of Xhosa with an ease I envy.  I don’t know what he’s saying but he speaks with such vehemence that I imagine he is a close family friend. Camera raised I slide to the front and sit at his feet as he addresses the crowd. From this position I am shooting directly up at him but my presence only seems to increase his fervor. He waves his arms wildly, pacing and shouting, covering me with a fine spray of spit and perspiration. 

The boy in the coffin was 17, killed in a car crash on the way to a football match. On either side of the coffin, teammates with downturned faces stand, arms crossed over uniformed chests. I photograph a river of black rainwater under the coffin, football boots with high white socks on either side. 

An older man speaks now. His hair is greying and he wears a long black mourning coat. He begins softly, crying a little but his voice builds till he is shouting hoarsely, waving his fist at the audience. I imagine he is railing against the injustice of such a futile death. 

Outside the rain is falling in a thin veil. My camera catches a glimpse of my housekeepers’ son standing under a red umbrella. The boy in the coffin was one of his best friends. His bends his head and wipes his eyes as my camera translates him into tones of grey.

The next speaker is a woman in a dark floral dress and an enormous white, Sunday Church hat that looks like a cake. Later I learn she is the Preacher’s wife but again the strength of her feeling makes me think she is a relative. 

The boy’s family sits in another section of the tent. His mother is large and immobile in black also with a new hat. She is flanked by other female relatives in Sunday clothes and the boys little sister, all in white. The boy’s father is spread across two seats on the other side of the tent and I wonder if he’s drunk or overcome as his head nods to his chest.

After the service the coffin is wheeled out under the clearing sky and slid into a purpose-built trailer made of glass. Printed pictures of the boy’s face are taped to the windows. Two long rows of teenagers in football uniforms lead the procession to an industrial building 2km away. We follow slowly in cars without speaking and park on the dusty shoulder next to barbed wire-topped walls. 

The large, open, brick structure of the hall is already packed when we arrive but Noma leads us through the gaping crowd and we sit in the third row. Turning my head I take in the sea of bobbing black faces behind me. The coffin has been positioned on the right side of a small stage with six plastic chairs and a small pile of flowered wreaths. The chairs are soon occupied by those who spoke at the funeral and three others. One of the men has a smooth face and intense black eyes that I imagine have special powers. Noma tells me he is the head of the church. Later he grips my hand and looks deep into my soul. 

When the crowd settles speakers come from the audience one at a time to address the clergy and the audience. This time the speaches are less practiced and more frequently interrupted by tears. I imagine those who speak are telling about the last time they saw the boy alive. When one of the young men in football uniforms takes the stage I imagine him telling the story of how the boy died by the roadside. Again I don’t understand the words but I feel the emotion all the same and I notice heavy drops of water filling my camera’s viewfinder. 

After the speaches there is quiet and then suddenly music. Noma tells me that the spirit is being welcomed into the afterlife. The figures on stage stand and rock to the music. One man pounds the floor with a large staff as he dances. An enormous lady in a flowered dress and giant sunglasses comes forward, waving her arms, her expansive form taken with the spirit of the music. The whole room is pulsing with heavenly singing. The clergy dance out the door and the crowd follows. 

Suddenly silent, we stand blinking in the sunlight as the coffin is re-loaded into its purpose built trailer. 

Back in my car I wipe my face and turn onto the highway. In front of me six young men on the back of a bakkie smile and wave. I recognise the handsome face of my housekeeper’s son and I pull out my camera and shoot a last picture of him as I drive away.

noma

Noma 

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A friend from England phoned. He was in New York and would meet me for dinner at an Indian restaurant on 6th Street. I found it easily, a small blue door surrounded by thousands of fairy lights. Inside I ducked under a heavy canopy of bright red chilli Christmas lights and made my way through the cramped red plastic tables. I found Mark and he greeted me like old friends do, hugging me too long and changing the subject quickly. I watched his handsome face across the table and thought absently that it must be easier not to be American. At the next table six Indian waiters sang ‘Happy Birthday’ at full volume accompanied by a blaring disco soundtrack. Mark and I sat smiling and waiting. Poppadams arrived with sweet chilli and mint and yogurt. 
Then he said it.: “I’m moving to Cape Town.”
“South Africa?!” I asked in disbelief.  “you can do that? Just move?!” 

I have often had the feeling at pivotal moments in my life that the soundtrack suddenly fades. The restaurant blurred suddenly around us, the brightly coloured lights and the singing waiters blending into a distant haze as Mark answered question after question about how and where. After I hurry him through his dinner the restaurant spat us out on the freezing sidewalk. Snowflakes were just starting to fall and we could see our breath leaving our mouths in steaming clouds as we talked and walked home. 

That night I pushed the neighbours cat out of the way and opened the 6 locks on my front door. I left the lights off and dropped my keys into a ceramic bowl in the front hall before proceeding directly to my computer. One touch of it’s green blinking eye and the room was suddenly bathed in blue light. I clicked on the Travelocity website and quickly booked tickets…

A few weeks later my daughter lay sleeping beside me, the gentle hum and rumble of the jet engines all around us. I pulled the synthetic airplane blanket around her and switched on my reading light. In the small pool of florescent light I reached for the in-flight magazine. Flipping quickly through the pages I landed absently on a real estate ad. It seems now that all these events happened without my full knowledge. Some greater hand turning the pages of my destiny. Funny how life is altered by the smallest things – a phone call, an ad in a magazine. What made me tear the page from the magazine, tuck it into my bag and switch off the light? Does fate just step in every once in a while and take the wheel?
____

Toast in my mouth, I take a swig of tea and I run down the stairs to answer the repeatedly-ringing doorbell. 
“Coming!” I shout. 

Rain pounds on the corrugated plastic roof of the front hall. At the door stands an enormous black woman with a red turban and matching dress. 
She is perfectly dry. 
We stand looking at each other and then her face blooms into an enormous smile. “I am Eunice, I have come to work for you.” 

I hadn’t asked her to come, she had simply appeared; like the moon appears sometimes in the sky as if it was always there. There was no question that I would say ‘yes’ and we sat at the dining room table without being sure what else there was to say. 

“It’s not your name is it? Eunice.” 
“No.” She says “But you won’t be able to say my name with your American tongue.” 
“Try me” I said. 

The word rolls so beautifully off her lips and lands in the air with a soft click. I was determined and I did my best and she smiled at me and nodded. 

_____

Then the house was slowly filled with her personality. In the good times she would sing as she did the ironing and I could feel her presence making my heart warmer inside wherever I was. In bad times she would sit in my office and wipe tears from her broad face. Or we would stand in the road outside her house, my tears falling on her generous chest. The connection between us was always strong but deepended over time.  So much so that we shared physical pains. If she fell, I felt pain in the same limb; if I woke with a pain in my neck I knew she would arrive rubbing her neck just there. 

She shared a million African wisdoms with me: bees in the house means company is coming; Worms in the drain, a message from the ancestors; The feeling inside when something is coming; and the meaning of Ubuntu – ‘I am who I am because you are who you are’ – the (truly African) practice of sharing what you have with those who don’t.

______

Noma arrived in tears one morning. Her husband, had come home from work drunk, they had fought. He pushed her out of the room they shared and - as she and her children tried to beat down the door- he made a noose with en electric cable. Now filled with guilt and anger and shame she came to me. Together we drove to her house. We parked the car on the dusty road and walked in silence through the twisted paths between shacks to hers. 

Her husbands’ sisters had been summoned to sit on suicide watch and we all sat formally on chairs in the small living room not knowing what to say. Her husband moved from room to room sullen and shamed, in a trance. His thin face said everything and nothing as his sisters’ similar features smiled politely at me. She and I shared this. 

We have shared everything. Divorce and betrayal, sickness and health, sadness and joy, growth and pain. We raised daughters together and lived together for more than twelve important years. When I think of South Africa and the years I have lived here hers’ is the first face I will think of. And when we return to visit she will be my first stop. I was so luck to have seen life a little from her perspective and when we leave, a piece of all of us will stay with her.

buenos aires

My (now ex) husband, Gustavo grew up in Villa Martelli, a rough neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.  The area is a warren of low, rough, cement buildings and rusting signposts. It looks the way you might imagine Mexico to look – an odd mixture of crumbling houses with iron grills. Brightly painted buses rumble noisily past groups of listless young boys on street corners. The main street is Laprida with side streets Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay that intersect with no stop signs. Here you stop briefly-  but only briefly – at red lights particularly at night when this area is too dangerous to stop at all. The houses are small with low roofs of corrugated iron and tiled front gardens. Most curtains are drawn behind their gated windows and shops are shuttered after seven and during the long lunchtime break. 

Argentinians live on a time schedule punctuated by mid-morning and mid afternoon ‘Mate’ breaks. Bitter tea sipped through an elaborate strainer-straw is passed from person to person in a leather pouch like a peace-pipe shared among friends. It is usually accompanied by dry crackers spread with sticky sweet caramel spread (Dulce de leche) or Medialunas, dry croissants that sometimes glisten with sugar crystals. In the morning there is strong, dark coffee and ‘facturas’ – little pastries you pick off the shelf with metal tongs and place in a basket to take to the counter where they are lovingly wrapped in white tissue paper that crackles expectantly around the sugary, glazed pastries. 

People seem to drift into work just in time for Mate then at one o’clock sharp everything shuts down and people go home to share midday meal with their families. At my mother-in-law’s house we sit at a long, dark wooden table with a white lace runner and eat homemade moon-shaped pies called ‘Empanadas’. They have coded markings punched into their browned folded edges indicating fillings. One hole- spicy meat, crescent hole – chicken, etc. They are hot with melted cheese dripping from their edges. When my father-in-law was alive he would try to add to the confusion of claiming what each person had ordered by claiming every variety of Empanada for himself. He loved food. 

Vegetarians in Buenos Aires eat mostly bread and cheese but sometimes there are bowls of salads – grated beet and carrot and chopped potato with egg. After lunch there is ‘Siesta’. Silence falls on cold stone floors as the sun shines through frilly net curtains. Men lie across beds with embroidered spreads; one arm across tired eyes as the women do dishes and hang up laundry in the hot sun. After lunch keys are collected from wooden sideboards and the metal gates of the shops slide reluctantly open. Old men play checkers in the park or lean on shop counters drinking Mate and listening to Gardel on the radio. He sings about the city of Buenos Aires and the fear that death will call him and he will never see her again. ‘Mi Buenos Aires querida,’ he sounds as if his heart will break. When Carlos Gardel died in 1935 three women committed suicide (one in Rio, NY and one in Buenos Aires). The city mourned its favorite son with a state funeral. It is said that if you place a smoldering cigarette between the cold bronze fingers of the life-sized statue on Carlos Gardel’s grave grave in the Cimeterio de Chacaritas, your wish will be granted. We’ll see.

Criss-crossed by wide avenues with heavy traffic, the city is less than beautiful but the heart and soul of Buenos Aires is in the details. There is incredibly beautiful typography (from the 20’s and 30’s) everywhere, and long, skinny French-style shutters on elaborate stone buildings. 

Trendy little areas pop up in little neighbourhoods around the city where you can eat powdered sugar alfahores or sip Quilmes in sidewalk cafes. There is fabulous modern design in chic little sidewalk shops – cow skin hammock chairs and beautiful knitted rainbow dresses for little girls. I bought a 5’ ladybug with bulbous antennae and fiendish looking eyes. Later a taxi driver watches with astonishment as I attempt to wrestle it into a taxi. There are so many cute things for kids. Drunken looking sheepskin rabbits with floppy ears and big bottoms and giant pink heart-shaped fuzzy rugs with shiny red edges. The modern furniture is great too – animal hide everything and white plastic modern – great ideas and shapes. Districts like Avenida Santa Fe and Belgrano are crammed with shops full of white plastic mannequins in bias cut 80’s styles in cyan, white and yellow. 

I love shopping for ordinary things in a new place – supermarkets and hardware stores and ‘mom and pop’ shops. The bra shop is one of the latter. Six metres by four, the walls are covered from floor to ceiling with small boxes with handwritten magic marker labels. A thin grey man in a clean brown work coat, sells thread and buttons, stamps and envelopes, jewelry and hair brushes in the front while at the back his wife presides over the cramped bra counter. She is an enormous woman in a flowered housedress. She hands me a stack of bras without asking my size and indicates a green felt curtain in a tiny storeroom. Bras in my size tend to be industrial affairs with flying buttresses and reinforced gables. These are delicate and I am immediately skeptical. Sure enough they are not right. Don’t ask me why but it seems that bras in my size (34E) are always bizarre. They always make one look like some sort of Soviet missile launcher with Torpedo breasts jutting out from under each arm, or they have a strange flattening effect that makes my chest look like a strange, lumpy extension of my stomach. For me shopping for bras is an eternal struggle and I have things to do, property to purchase… “I give up,” I say, looking dismayed but she is not to be deterred. “One more try” she says forming her thick fingers into the number one before climbing the rickety ladder to pull boxes from a top shelf. She hands me something beautiful and lacy. ‘Oh sure’ I say to myself. Behind the felt curtain I slip the lacy straps over my arms, adjust and stand back amazed. It is perfect. She smiles at me knowingly as I emerge. “I have been doing this for thirty years” she says in a slightly ‘I told you so’ tone of voice, “I just needed a little time….” 

In 2004 a family friend of my Argentinian (now ex)husband had inherited an apartment in Buenos Aires from a cousin who committed suicide. Knowing that we were interested in purchasing something in Buenos Aires for our daughter he offered us the option of purchasing it. As our daughter was still small it was decided that I would fly to Buenos Aires on my own to check out the apartment. I speak Spanish the way Tarzan speaks English and so I was apprehensive but quite excited as I boarded the flight. I was met at the other end by my in-laws who deposited me at the door of the flat and departed. As I entered the apartment it occurred to me – rather surprisingly for the first time – that I would be spending the night alone in the deserted apartment of a woman who had shot herself there only a week before. I have long had a fascination for the feeling of empty rooms – the power that resonates in them long after the occupants have left. The three-room apartment, newly cleaned and painted, was empty except for a blow-up mattress and a stack of industrial candles (no electricity). Although I did not like the apartment, I felt a strange deep calm there; a peaceful quiet that invaded my dreams and held me quietly in its gentle arms. 

Having decided that this apartment was not right and seeing as how I had three days till my departing flight I decided to look instead for the kind of apartment I would have liked. I head to San Telmo, the old cobbled tango district which has always been my favorite. Here I install myself  in a dimly lit café to consider. I love waiters in Buenos Aires. Old men in short black jackets and long white aprons who move quickly around the café dealing with customers as if they were tolerated interlopers in a sacred crypt. Only long-term patrons earn their respect. I order quickly and decisively having practiced my order first in my head several times and he nods approvingly. I imagine that I have set myself apart from the tourist riff-raff but I am faced with a dilemma as I want to look at my map…. He returns in a minute with watery hot chocolate in a glass cup and a plate piled high with small golden medialunas. The bar is dark with simple wooden chairs and elaborately tiled floors. Tall French windows look out on the Plaza Dorrego where tourists watch tango demonstrations on Sunday mornings. I ask the waiter where the nearest estate agent is and he gestures without looking at me. 

It is hard to understand the social codes in a foreign city but B.A. seems to run on ancient lay-lines of social acquaintance the way Paris does. A brief introduction to the local butcher from someone known will alter the quality of the goods you buy regardless of price. And so my cold –calling into Real Estate offices is not well received. The well-groomed real estate ladies in black pumps shake their heads at me when I finish describing the apartment I am looking for. “Impossible” they would say if they were French, here they just shake hair sprayed heads as if slowly dissuading a fly. I insist, pointing to likely properties posted in display cases and the temperature drops even further. “Not possible to see today”, “not in the style/area/ price range you are looking for”. They tell me it will take six months to find an apartment. But I am relentless, inspired by both my own pig-headedness and theirs. It is, of course possible to see the apartment today… but this is the charm of B.A., the oldest things are the best including the mis-trust of foreign money and a discrimination against a woman operating on her own. 

Nonetheless, a few hours later I am seated at my café table once again, this time with my new friend Americo de Pinera. He is approx 70 with slicked-back white hair and he walks as if he is wearing slippers. He has lived in San Telmo all his life. This morning as we walk from apartment to apartment he points out the places he was born and lived, and now as he sips his ‘Cortado’ he tells me about the people passing by the window. “Spanish lady” he says indicating a dramatic woman with pale skin and a dark bob. “owns a dance school in Madrid” the woman swings an enormous black shawl around her angular shoulders as she steps into the street. “- Rents the whole floor of that building, $8000 a month” he smiles and nods as she whips expertly around the next corner.

The first apartment he shows me is a rabbit warren of small rooms lived in by dying or derelict relatives of the owner. There are animal smells and dusty pigeon feathers on every surface. A thin woman with frayed, dyed black hair proudly shows us the work her husband has put into the apartment – varnished pine boards hammered over windows and a medieval castle-like construction of cement bricks in the bathroom. I don’t know what to say and I don’t want to touch anything. I move slowly around the apartment as if politely circumnavigating a sick bed. Finally it’s over, I glance at Americo on the way down the stairs and he points to himself and shakes his head as if to say ‘for me, no!’ I am starting to like him. 

Next he takes me to 1050 Balcarce, a low, French-style building one block from the Plaza Dorrego. Across the street a wide doorway opens onto a flowered courtyard with framed pictures of Gardel. An old man in the street argues with Americo about the original usage of the building. “Don’t try to tell me about San Telmo!” Americo is indignant as he shuffles across the cobbled street. We enter a carved wooden door into a corridor than opens to the sky. Up three steps Americo opens a door on the left and we enter a one-story house with high ceilings and glass French doors. Inside its cool I can feel the damp air rising off the terrazzo tiles. Many people would enter this house and see dirt on every surface, piles of garbage, peeling paint, ancient plumbing and stained mattresses. Evidence of neglect and old age. But I can see instantly how it will look. I can feel it. Original herringbone wooden floors polished and lovingly waxed, white plastered ceilings and Robin’s egg blue walls. Skinny green metal shutters creaking closed behind white glass paneled French doors in every room. One bedroom has a shuttered window on to the kitchen and I can see myself handing snacks to my daughter through it. Narrow stone steps twist up to a roof terrace with a white marble table and a view of the rooves and spires of nearby churches. I am in love. 

Later I sit with my mother in law beneath a string of coloured lights on a square in Palermo Hollywood. As we sip cool Quilmes beers in the warm blue evening she lists off the places and things that are forbidden to her now that she is a single woman. She went from her mother’s house to her husbands and now doesn’t know how to de scramble the social code that binds her. She can’t invite married male friends to dine with her, but most of her friends were his friends and therefore fit into this category. And she can’t go out alone. She jumps at the chance for even this small adventure. We order more beers and I try to inspire her to live her life. 

Some twenty-five years ago her baby-daughter was terribly ill and rushed to hospital in the middle of the night. In the ward chapel that night she made a solemn promise to the sister and to herself that if her daughter lived, she would volunteer in the hospital. After all these years this is the simple dream that lights up her face with the glow of possibility. We discuss the steps to be taken for a proper introduction and she swears to me that she will call on Monday morning. I give her advice from the privileged perspective of the educated, free life I have been lucky to live. I know how to put a house on the market, and a plan in motion and I quickly outline the steps as though the path will be easy. I know this is not the case but tonight everything is possible. Nonetheless my head is reeling with the beer buzz and the contagious potential of a new life as we leave the bar we link arms and stumble laughing into the warm spring night. The shops are still open and we stroll through the busy streets, sometimes separately, sometimes together. On the long taxi ride back to Villa Martelli she chats and even flirts a little with the driver. She is alive and sparkly and I am proud of her even just for this moment of possibility.

Across town in the smoky dance hall of ‘El Nuevo Salon de Tango Argentino’ powdered old ladies with black-lace stockings sit quietly waiting in groups to be asked to dance by ‘Tangueros’ with slicked-back black hair and permapress trousers.

austria

It was about four in the afternoon but the sky was already a dark, steely, grey colour. Our train was heading South through the Austrian countryside and I kept thinking that the scenery that flew past the window looked like a painted backdrop from a Cary Grant movie. It was all black hills and green fields and white snowy mountains with goats perched on sharp peaks and farmers in olive green capes. 

Marty and I had been travelling together for more than two weeks and I was already bored with the limited selection of tapes we’d brought for our Walkman. He leaned against the window and shut his eyes as he listened to the music. I watched the veins on the back of his hands dancing to the beat and I could tell he was listening to ‘The The’. 
Looking up I met the eyes of the woman sitting opposite me. 

She was about sixty years old and her soft brown hair was pulled back in a bun at the back of her neck. She was neatly dressed in a brown wool suit that looked like she’d just taken it out of the box. I watched her anxiously rubbing her hands together and I smiled. She asked me if I spoke German and looked terribly disappointed when I shook my head. She spoke no English but we discovered that we both spoke French. 

Marty took one of the plugs out of his ears for a minute and nodded while she and I introduced ourselves. When he went back to ‘The The’ she leaned a little closer to me. She spoke softly and carefully and she never took her eyes off mine as she began to recount the events of her life. Her French was eloquent and practiced as if she’d been telling the same story over and over in her mind for years.

She told me she’d always lived in the small village – she was born there, had married there and had had four children there. Her life would have ended without being remarkable in any way, she told me, if it wasn’t for the war. Her husband and sons had gone off to fight and the village had been occupied by the Germans. 
She and the other women of the village hated the Germans and risked their lives by showing support for the foreign prisoners who were being held in the town jail. They brought them food and blankets and spent as long as they were permitted chatting to the men about their homes and families. In the course of these visits she met a handsome young, French soldier. Her face shone as she described his broad shoulders and deep blue eyes. Little by little, she told me, she had fallen in love with him. When the other women had gone, she would sneak back to the jail and bribe the guards to spend precious minutes alone with her soldier. He told her he loved her and that some day, when he was free, he’d take her back to France with him. 

But when the war ended he had gone back to France and her husband and sons returned from fighting. Her life resumed its pre-war routine but she never stopped dreaming of her French soldier, the only man she had ever, or would ever love. 

They corresponded over the years. He wrote at first to say that he missed her and then the letters stopped for a bit. Then he wrote to say he was getting married. Then he wrote to say that he was working on such and such a thing or going to this place or that and then he wrote that his wife had died. 

Then, she told me, two weeks ago he had written to say he would be in Salzburg. For three days she hadn’t slept or eaten. She had dreamt of him her whole life long and now she had the chance to see him. She had answered his letter, lied to her family, and left her village for the first time in her life. 

“You know,” she said softly sobbing, “he was just an old man”. 

In her heart he had been a tall, handsome French soldier with broad shoulders and deep blue eyes and now he was just an old man shrunken with age and her dream, and the only love of her life were gone. 

She would go home now, she told me, and wait to die. Her eyes filled with tears and she leaned back in her chair, she said that in more than thirty years she had never mentioned any of this story to anyone. 

Marty looked up and asked me the time as the train pulled into the next station. The woman rose silently and took my hand, she held it for a moment and then left the train.

el dia de los muertos

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The street is dark and full of mischief. Lanterns and candles and skeletons with painted faces appear out of the darkness and disappear. I might be nervous if my hand was not held tightly in his; if he wasn’t running before me, looking back with that look that I know means that no harm can come to me. No one has ever made me feel this way, safe, but he does. His dark eyes flash with reflected light. 

People sing loudly as they dance past us laughing. He is part of this wild world but at the same time also a stranger like me. Since I first lived on my own my house has been filled with relics from this place - rusted metal grave markers and crucifixes, red and black woven fabrics and dark carved wooden creatures. Dried red chillis brush against my face as we twist through the portico of another café. People are shouting and drinking frosted beers with lime and tequila with salt. He darts left into a small alley and pulls me to him. It’s the middle of the night now and, away from the lanterns, the back streets of this small town are filled only with blue moonlight and long moon shadows. I can taste the lime on his lips as he kisses me deeply. I am breathless. I can feel the heat from his body pressed against mine and my head spins. I smile knowing that this amazing night will still end with his skin against mine, my long fingers in his black hair.

And then we are back in the streets. Above our heads float candle-lit icons beautifully painted in reds and golds. The baby Jesus, crying golden tears. Mary with outstretched arms and gilden halo. Men who look like cowboys lean on a rusted gate and another café spins past with someone aggressively strumming a guitar. 

There are colours everywhere - pink and yellow paper flowers and embroidered shawls on balconies, little girls with white lace dresses and purple sashes carrying flowers. The air erupts with the rapid ‘pop’ of firecrackers, blaring horns and the smell of fire-roasted meat. 

My head is swimming with tequila and excitement and I don’t care where we are going, just that we are here in this amazing place now. Away from our ‘real’ lives we are somehow so much more alive, more free to live this night completely. We can be anything we want tonight. With unspoken complicity we choose the role of lovers. Not the kind that exclude but the kind that spills over and infects strangers with kindness and joy. Old ladies offer us flowers and people grin knowingly as they pass us in slow motion. 

I have to stop to breathe. I feel as though we have been running since we me. We never stop talking, too many stories to tell and we barely sleep. Much later we lie side by side in the darkness and play with the energy field between us, hoping not to break the spell.