Dear Ben,
I found Conchita near where I’d first met her, standing before the copy of her family landscape, the mural on the back wall of the tiled Ladies’ of the Aeropuerto Cristóbal Colón. She was tying an apron around the waist of the subdued sack of her waitress costume as she pondered the mosaic—far less provocative than in the black dagger of her striker’s uniform. She was, I think, waiting for me.
“¿Qué lindo, no?”
The smouldering ruin on the hill, the seascape, with its three caravels, the backs of faceless women waving handkerchiefs from the dock, the few dull shacks falling into the river, were no more beautiful than the night before. A strong odor of ammonia made the blue of the ocean less dull and the crosses on the sails more garishly red.
What had changed was beneath the tiles. Beneath the tiles were barrels. Beneath the barrels, boys. Beneath the dress of the broad-shouldered, grey-eyed girl onshore, the secrets of navigation. But the ruin? A monastery? A mosque? A synagogue?
“Was it revenge for my desertion?” Conchita and I turned away from the mural. Hanni stood at the sinks, talking to the mirror, talking to us. “What do you think, Holland? Was this enormous puzzle, this guided tour—were they all in on it—Carranque, Santángel, Sammy L., Gershon Mundel and his light-fingered wife? Was this all just the pastime of a jaded travel agent with nothing better to do than torture his mother?”
“His mother?” I said. I took the brush from her hands and tried to put some order into her hair. “What about me? The rest of you were born into this crazy story. But Ben picked me, me to be the mother of his child. Why England, why the BBC? I’m not even Jewish, I’m …”
“A shiksa goddess”—Hanni turned to my unreflected face—“like Esau’s Florida, like his copper-coloured girl. Like Jacob’s Pachamama.”
When did you choose me, Ben? Before I grew? Afterwards? Was the choice made in Berlin, in Surrey, in utero? Or was it merely some grand coincidence of bonfire and Bach?
“Why couldn’t Ben have met us at the airport?” Hanni restored her hairbrush to her bag. “Before the strike?”
I’d asked myself the same question. Why not, Ben? After all you’ve made in commissions, why couldn’t you have plumped for a leisurely five-course meal with three wines, and told us the whole convoluted story in straightforward, genealogical English?
“My dear Señorita.” Conchita finished tying her apron. “A travel agent cannot indulge in direct revelation. He can only guide the client with bits of art—entertainment, trickery, parable, pictures in a cave—into a certain understanding. He must make the client believe that all choices are hers alone, all her experiences one of a kind.”
For all the news of strikes and jet fighters in the Herald Tribune, I could have dreamed away the night on the Naugahyde benches of Colón. I have crossed the waterless rivers of Mariposa, I have danced the bulería with Conchita on the stage of the Cine La Rábida. Yet I remain nothing more than a departing passenger.
I turned back to the mural. Three women.
If our paths cross, Ben, in some distant concert hall or out-of-the-way airport, I will be tempted to ask you a few questions. I reckon you may have a few of your own. For now, the women on shore are pocketing their handkerchiefs. We have a plane to catch.
Holland