“And suddenly, among all those people I didn’t know, I had this strange feeling, this implausible realisation that I was seeing him for the first time. Handsome, confident, articulate in a language I still cannot follow with grace. And I felt this pang inside, you know, as if a naughty elf inside me were swaying my heart with a rope. How can I see my husband for the first time after having been married to him for almost eight years?”
Rosalia remained silent, observing for some speculating seconds the little square of tablet that Rita had brought for their tea.
“Your husband is exactly like this sweet, darling, which, by the way, is delicious. I need the recipe before you leave.”
“Like tablet?” Rita inclined her head to the right in the exact same way her daughter did when she heard anything worth clarification. “My grandmother Cochrane would be very honoured to know you like her Scottish tablet so much. I cannot make anybody eat it at home. Henry says it’s too sweet and Maggie too sticky.”
“Well…,” Rosalia sighed, “for me it’s perfect, and I am sure nobody in this office will say no to this morsel of Heaven. It reminds me of a dulce de leche candy my detestable mother-in-law used to make in Buenos Aires for Christmas. As you can see, even her perfect evilness was imperfect.”
Rita smiled again and rejoiced at the fact that she could come to visit her older friend at the Castelo de San Jorge with the express purpose of selfishly collecting smiles like Maggie used to collect peacock feathers in the garden before she started going to kindergarten. Rosalia’s office was a new environment for their meetings now. A step up on the podium of a friendship that had begun outside the Castelo box office under a narrow eave on a humid stone bench. Rita loved to breathe in the peace of the office, with its austere decor and dark wooden cabinets that had once cherished the delicate porcelain of Portuguese queens and now held Rosalia’s dictionaries alongside maps, brochures, and tourist forms for all those who came to witness the royal luxury of ancient times.
“So, do you mean that this feeling of seeing Henry again for the first time at the bank’s banquet is sweet like my grandmother’s tablet?”
“Not exactly. When I saw those brownish cubes on the plate, I was convinced that it would be difficult for me to bite into them. You know, my weak teeth and all that. But then I bit into one of them, and it melted on my tongue. And I felt this torrent of pleasure bursting in my mouth. I think what happened to you on Saturday is that you saw Henry like random people usually see him. You heard a far echo of the vision you had of him when you fell in love.”
Rita’s inner elf jumped from her heart to her face to make her frown and purse her lips at the same time.
“But sadly,” Rosalia continued, “you already know that what you saw is an act. The source of your confusion and your loneliness. You love a vision in a dream, a beautiful piece of candy in a perfect window shop that gets further and further away as you get closer.”
A soft knock at the door interrupted the old woman’s thought and let Rita take a sip of tea to conceal her disillusionment. Rosalia took the documents that Victor brought, turned to her side desk, and placed one of the pages in her sturdy IBM Selectric. She adjusted the corners of the paper as if she were folding a handkerchief for the ghost of one of the queens that had inhabited the Castelo centuries ago. Rosalia’s eyes were fixed on the rectangular screen of her typewriter as she turned toward Rita and pronounced in perfect French, “Trompe-l’oil…. trompe-l’oil[1] people I call them. What you see is never what you get. The man I married and later divorced, so many decades ago, was like that. Sometimes, out of the blue, I remember how elegant and self-confident he seemed to be, and still, after all this time, that elf you mentioned still plays tricks with my heart and its cords. Do you know the legend of the two Greek painters of ancient times?”
Rita looked up from her cup and raised her left red-haired eyebrow as an invitation.
“There was a competition to declare the most realistic painter in the land. Zeuxis and Parrhasius presented their art. The grapes that Zeuxis had painted were so impossibly real that birds flew into them and crushed their beaks and heads on the purple spheres. They died a cruel death, believing they were tasting the sweetest pulps and the bitterest seeds. Zeuxis, sure of his triumph, asked his opponent where his painting was. Parrhasius walked him in front of the curtain that hid his work. ‘Draw this cloth and you will see it,’ he said humbly. But Zeuxis’ eager hand trampled on the folds of a fake, perfect drapery made of shades, hues, and light. Parrhasius won not only the prize but the admiration of his enemy.”
Rita inclined her head to the left. “I’m sorry for the birds.”
“That’s why I don’t tell this story much. My granddaughter has a phobia of birds that decide to fly stubbornly in the wrong direction. I’m afraid I instilled that in her with this tale.”
Rita picked up a brown crumb from her saucer. “If only I could draw aside the curtain Henry places between himself, Maggie, and me. I’m a good wife. I don’t know what else to do.” Rita dropped the crumb and killed an imminent sob with the tip of her finger.
“You are like the candid birds, my child. You are hurt but strong. Cannot you see? You’re making sweets with the salt of tears, pure visions of love with the threads of deceit.”
[1] Deceive the eye… deceive the eye
Fabiana Elisa Martínez authored the collections 12 Random Words and Conquered by Fog. Other works of hers have been published in literary publications on five continents.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles
Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International
Borderless 