What I Didn't See and Other Stories Read online

  Charlotta and I had a policy never to order the same thing off a menu. This was hard, because the same thing always sounded good to both of us, but it doubled our chances of making the right choice. Charlotta ordered a pizza called El Diablo, which was all theater and annoyed me, as we don't like hot foods. El Diablo brought tears to her eyes, and she only ate one piece, picking the olives off the rest and then helping herself to several slices of mine.

  She wiped her face with a napkin, which left a rakish streak of pizza sauce on her cheek. I was irritated enough to say nothing about this. One of the Italians made his way to our table. “So,” he said with no preliminaries. “American, yes? I can kiss you?"

  We were nothing if not patriots. Charlotta stood at once, moved into his arms, and I saw his tongue go into her mouth. They kissed for several seconds, then Charlotta pushed him away, and now the pizza sauce was on him.

  "So,” she said. “Now. We need directions to the closest internet caf?."

  The Italian drew a map on her place mat. He drew well; his map had depth and perspective. The internet caf? appeared to be around many corners and up many flights of stairs. The Italian decorated his map with hopeful little hearts. Charlotta took it away from him or there surely would have been more of these.

  * * * *

  The San Margais miracle, an anecdotal account:

  About ten years ago, a little boy named Bastien Brunelle was crossing the central plaza when he noticed something strange on the face of the statue of Fra Nando. He looked more closely. Fra Nando was crying large milky tears. Bastien ran home to tell his parents.

  The night before, Bastien's father had had a dream. In his dream he was old and crippled, twisted up like a licorice stick. In his dream he had a dream that told him to go and bathe in the river. He woke from the dream dream and made his slow, painful way down the 839 steps. At the bottom of the gorge he waited. He heard a noise in the distance, cars on a freeway. The river arrived like a train and stopped to let him in. Bastien's father woke up and was thirty-two again, which was his proper age.

  When he heard about the statue, Bastien's father remembered the dream. He followed Bastien out to the square where a crowd was gathering, growing. “Fra Nando is crying for the river,” Bastien's father told the crowd. “It's a sign to us. We have to put the river back."

  Bastien's father had never been a community leader. He ran a small civil war museum for tourists, filled with faked Gigo poems, and rarely bought a round for the house when he went out drinking. But now he had all the conviction of the man who sees clearly amidst the men who are confused. He organized a brigade to carry water down the steps to the bottom of the gorge and his purpose was so absolute, so inspired were his words, that people volunteered their spare hours, their children's spare hours. They signed up for slots in his schedule and carried water down the stairs for almost a week before they all lost interest and remembered Bastien's father was not the mouth of God, but a tight-assed cheat.

  By this time news of the crying statue had gone out on the internet. Scientists had performed examinations. “Fakery cannot be ruled out,” one said, which transformed into the headline, “No Sign of Fakery.” Pilgrims began to arrive from wealthy European countries, mostly college kids with buckets, thermoses, used Starbucks cups. They would stay two or three days, two or three weeks, hauling water down, having visions on the stairs and sex.

  And then that ended, too. Every time has its task. Ours is to digitize the world's libraries. This is a big job that will take generations to complete, like the pyramids. No time for filling gorges with water. “Live lightly on the earth,” the pilgrims remembered. “Leave no footprint behind.” And they all went home again, or at least they left San Margais.

  * * * *

  On odd days of the week our people-finder detective emailed Charlotta and copied me. On even, the opposite. Two days earlier Raphael had bought a hat and four postcards. He had dinner at a pricey restaurante and got a fifty-dollar cash advance. That was Charlotta's email.

  Mine said that this very night, he was buying fifteen beers at the Last Word Caf?, San Margais.

  We googled that name to a single entry. 100 Ruta de los Esclavos by the river, it said. Open mike. Underground music and poetry nightly.

  There were other Americans using the computers. I walked through, asking if any of them knew how to get to the Last Word Caf?. To Ruta de los Esclavos? They were paying by the minute. Most of them didn't look up. Those that did shook their heads.

  Charlotta and I opened our umbrellas and went back out into the rain. We asked directions from everyone we saw, but very few people were on the street. They didn't know English or they disliked being accosted by tourists or they didn't like the look of our face. They hurried by without speaking. Only a single woman stopped. She took my chin in her hand to make sure she had my full attention. Her eyes were tinged in yellow, and she smelled like Irish Spring soap. “No,” she said firmly. “Me entiendes? No for you."

  We walked along the gorge, because this was the closest thing San Margais had to a river. On one side of us, the town. The big yellow I of Tourist Information (closed indefinitely), shops of ceramics and cheeses, postcards, law offices, podiatrists, pubs, our own pensione. On the other the cliff face, the air. We crossed the narrow bridge and when we came to the 839 steps we started down them just because they were mostly inside the cliff and therefore covered and therefore dry. I was the one to point these things out to Charlotta. I was the one to say we should go down.

  The steps were smooth and slippery. Each one had a dip in the center in just that place where a slave was most likely to put his (or her) foot. Water dripped from the walls around us, but we were able to close our umbrellas, leave them at the top to be picked up later. For the first stretch there were lights overhead. Then we were in darkness, except for an occasional turn, which brought an occasional opening to the outside. A little light could carry us a long way.

  We descended maybe 300 steps, and then, by one of the openings, we met an American coming up. In age she was somewhere in that long, unidentifiable stretch from twenty-two to thirty-five. She was carrying an empty bucket, plastic, the sort a child takes to the seashore. She was breathless from the climb.

  She stopped beside us, and we waited until she was able to speak. “What the fuck,” she said finally, “is the point of going down empty-handed? What the fuck is the point of you?"

  Charlotta had been asking sort of the same thing. What was the point of going all the way down the stairs? Why had she let me talk her into it? She talked me into going back. We turned and followed the angry American up and out into the rain. It was only 300 steps, but when we'd done them we were winded and exhausted. We went to our room, crawled up our three ladders, and landed in a deep, dispirited sleep.

  It was still raining the next morning. We went to the city center and breakfasted in a little bakery. Just as we were finishing, our Italian walked in. “We kiss more, yes?” he asked me. He'd mistaken me for Charlotta. I stood up. I was always having to do her chores. His tongue ranged through my mouth as if he were looking for scraps. I tasted cigarettes, gum, things left in ashtrays.

  "So,” I said, pushing him away. “Now. We need directions to the Last Word Caf?."

  And it turned out we'd almost gotten there last night, after all. The Last Word was the last stop along the 839 steps. It seemed as if I'd known this.

  Our Italian said he'd been the night before. No one named Raphael had taken the mic; he was sure of this, but he thought there might have been a South African at the bar. Possibly this South African had bought him a drink. It was a very crowded room. No one had died. That was just—how is it we Americans say? Poem license?

  "Raphael probably wanted to get the feel of the place before he spoke,” Charlotta said. “That's what I'd do."

  And me. That's what I'd do, too.

  * * * *

  There was no point in going back before dark. We checked our email, but he was apparently still
living on the cash advance; nothing had been added since the Last Word last night. We decided to spend the day as tourists, thinking Raphael might do the same. Because of the rain we had the outdoor sights mostly to ourselves. We saw the ruins of the old baths, long and narrow as lap pools, now with nets of morning glories twisted across them. Here and there the rain had filled them.

  There was a Roman arch, a Moorish garden. When we were wetter than we could bear to be we paid the eight euros entrance to the civil war museum. English translation was extra, but we were on a budget; there are no bargains on last-minute tickets to San Margais. We told ourselves it was more in keeping with the spirit of Gigo if we didn't understand a thing.

  The museum was small, two rooms only and dimly lit. We stood awhile beside the wall radiator, drying out and warming up. Even from that spot we could see most of the room we were in. There were three life-size dioramas—mannequins dressed as Gigo might have dressed, meeting with people Gigo might have met. We recognized the mannequin Fra Nando from the statue we'd seen in the city center, although this version was less friendly. His hand was on Gigo's shoulder, his expression enigmatic. She was looking past him up at something tall and transcendent. There was clothing laid out, male and female, in glass cases along with playbills, baptismal certificates, baby pictures. Stapled to the wall were a series of book illustrations—a bandito seizing a woman on a balcony. The woman shaking free, leaping to her death. A story Gigo had written? A family legend? A scene from the civil war? All of the above? The man who sold us our tickets, Se?or Brunelle, was conducting a tour for an elderly British couple, but since we hadn't paid it would be wrong to stand where we could hear. We were careful not to do so.

  We spoke to Se?or Brunelle after. We made polite noises about the museum, so interesting, we said. So unexpected. And then Charlotta asked him what he knew about the Last Word Caf?.

  "For tourists,” he said. “Myself, my family, we don't go down the steps anymore.” He was clearly sad about this. “All tourists now."

  "What does it mean?” Charlotta asked first. “Poetry to the death?"

  "Which word needs definition? Poetry? Or Death?"

  "I know the words."

  "Then I am no more help,” Se?or Brunelle told her.

  "Why does it say it's by the river when there's no river?” Charlotta asked second.

  "Always a river. In San Margais, always a river. Sometimes in your mind. Sometimes in the gorge. Either way, a river."

  "Is there any reason we shouldn't go?” Charlotta asked third.

  "Go. You go. You won't get in,” Se?or Brunelle said. He said this to Charlotta. He didn't say it to me.

  * * * *

  The Last Worders:

  On the night Raphael took the open mic at the Last Word Caf?, he did three poems. He spoke ten minutes. He stood on the stage and he didn't try to move; he didn't try to make it sing; he made no effort to sell his words. The light fell in a small circle on his face so that, most of the time, his eyes were closed. He was beautiful. The people listening also closed their eyes, and that made him more beautiful still. The women, the men who'd wanted him when he started to talk no longer did so. He was beyond that, unfuckable. For the rest of their lives, they'd be undone by the mere sound of his name. The ones who spoke English tried to write down some part of what he'd said on their napkins, in their travel journals. They made lists of words—childhood, ice, yes. Gleaming, yes, yesterday.

  These are the facts. Anyone can figure out this much.

  For the rest, you had to be there. What was heard, the things people suddenly knew, the things people suddenly felt—none of that could be said in any way that could be passed along. By the time Raphael had finished, everyone listening, everyone there for those few minutes on that night at the Last Word Caf?, had been set free.

  These people climbed the steps afterward in absolute silence. They did not go back, not a single one of them, to their marriages, their families, their jobs, their lives. They walked to the city center and they sat in the square on the edge of the fountain at the feet of the friendly Fra Nando and they knew where they were in a way they had never known it before. They tried to talk about what to do next. Words came back to them slowly. Between them, they spoke a dozen different languages, all useless now.

  You could have started the movie of any one of them there, at the feet of the stone statue. It didn't matter what they could and couldn't say; they all knew the situation. Whatever they did next would be done together. They could not imagine, ever again, being with anyone who had not been there, in the Last Word Caf?, on the night Raphael Kaplinsky spoke.

  There were details to be ironed out. How to get the money to eat. Where to live, where to sleep. How to survive now, in a suddenly clueless world.

  But there was time to make these decisions. Those who had cars fetched them. Those who did not climbed in, fastened their seat belts. On the night Raphael Kaplinsky spoke at the Last Word Caf?, the patrons caravanned out of town without a last word to anyone. The rest of us would not hear of the Last Worders again until one of them went on Larry King Live and filled a two-hour show with a two-hour silence.

  * * * *

  Or else they all died.

  * * * *

  Charlotta and I had dinner by ourselves in the converted basement of an old hotel. The candles flickered our shadows about so we were, on all sides, surrounded by us. Charlotta had the trout. It had been cooked dry, and was filled with small bones. Every time she put a bite in her mouth, she pulled the tiny bones out. I had the mussels. The sauce was stiff and gluey. Most of the shells hadn't opened. The food in San Margais is nothing to write home about.

  We finished the meal with old apples and young wine. We were both nervous, now that it came down to it, about seeing Raphael again. Each of us secretly wondered, could we live with Raphael's choice? However it went? Could I be happy for Charlotta, if it came to that? I asked myself. Could I bear watching her forced to be happy for me? I sipped my wine and ran through every moment of my relationship with Raphael for reassurance. That stuff about the acid experiment. How much he liked my boots. “Let's go,” Charlotta said, and we were a bit unsteady from the wine, which, in retrospect, with an evening of 839 steps ahead of us, was not smart.

  We crossed the bridge in a high wind. The rain came in sideways; the wind turned our umbrellas inside out. Charlotta was thrown against the rope rails and grabbed on to me. If she'd fallen, she would have taken me with her. If I saved her, I saved us both. Our umbrellas went together into the gorge.

  We reached the steps and began to descend, sometimes with light, sometimes feeling our way in the darkness. About one hundred steps up from the bottom, a room had been carved out of the rock. Once slave owners had sat at their leisure there, washing and rewashing their hands and feet, overseeing the slaves on the stairs. Later the room had been closed off with the addition of a heavy metal door. A posting had been set on a sawhorse outside. The Last Word Caf?, the English part of it said. Not for Everyone.

  The door was latched. Charlotta pounded on it with her fist until it opened. A man in a tuxedo with a wide orange cummerbund stepped out. He shook his head. “American?” he asked. “And empty-handed? That's no way to make a river."

  "We're here for the poetry,” Charlotta told him, and he shook his head again.

  "Invitation only."

  And Charlotta reached into the back pocket of her pants. Charlotta pulled out the orange paper given to me by the boy on the train. The man took it. He threw it into a small basket with many other such papers. He stood aside and let Charlotta enter.

  He stepped back to block me. “Invitation only."

  "That was my invitation,” I told him. “Charlotta!” She looked back at me, over her shoulder, without really turning around. “Tell him. Tell him that invitation was for me. Tell him how Se?or Brunelle told you you wouldn't get in."

  "So?” said Charlotta. “That woman on the street told you you wouldn't get in."

  But I
had figured that part out. “She mistook me for you,” I said.

  Beyond the door I could see Raphael climbing onto the dais. I could hear the room growing silent. I could see Charlotta's back sliding into a crowd of people like a knife into water. The door swung toward my face. The latch fell.

  I stayed a long time by that door, but no sounds came through. Finally I walked down the last hundred steps. I was alone at the bottom of the gorge where the rain fell and fell and there was no river. I would never have done to Charlotta what she had done to me.

  It took me more than an hour to climb back up. I had to stop many, many times to rest, airless, heart throbbing, legs aching, lightheaded in the dark. No one met me at the top.

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  The Dark

  In the summer of 1954, Anna and Richard Becker disappeared from Yosemite National Park along with Paul Becker, their three-year-old son. Their campsite was intact; two paper plates with half-eaten frankfurters remained on the picnic table, and a third frankfurter was in the trash. The rangers took several black-and-white photographs of the meal, which, when blown up to eight by ten, as part of the investigation, showed clearly the words love bites, carved into the wooden picnic table many years ago. There appeared to be some fresh scratches as well; the expert witness at the trial attributed them, with no great assurance, to raccoon.

  The Beckers’ car was still backed into the campsite, a green De Soto with a spare key under the right bumper and half a tank of gas. Inside the tent, two sleeping bags had been zipped together marital style and laid on a large tarp. A smaller flannel bag was spread over an inflated pool raft. Toiletries included three toothbrushes; Ipana toothpaste, squeezed in the middle; Ivory soap; three washcloths; and one towel. The newspapers discreetly made no mention of Anna's diaphragm, which remained powdered with talc, inside its pink shell, or of the fact that Paul apparently still took a bottle to bed with him.

  Their nearest neighbor had seen nothing. He had been in his hammock, he said, listening to the game. Of course, the reception in Yosemite was lousy. At home he had a shortwave set; he said he had once pulled in Dover, clear as a bell. “You had to really concentrate to hear the game,” he told the rangers. “You could've dropped the bomb. I wouldn't have noticed."