“This is all?”
She had packed the suitcase herself. It was hard to look inside: the unbearable persistence of hope. Of course there were no notebooks, no manuscript. Only shirts and trousers. A lot of woolen sweaters; Frida believes the sky of New York flings down snow at all times, even August. Also milk of magnesia, aspro gargle, and Horlick’s powder for nerves, furthering Frida’s vision of Gringolandia. Toothbrush, razor. She says it’s not a good idea to bring more than this. A large trunk would draw suspicion.
“Remember, this is not an emigration.”
But her embrace was like a child’s farewell, dramatic and desperate. She didn’t want to let go. “Look, okay. I brought you two presents. One is from Diego. He doesn’t know yet. But I’m sure he would want you to have this. For Sóli, the drifter between two houses, to commemorate your journey. Look, it’s the codex!”
It was the codex. The ancient book of the Azteca, a long tableau in pictures on accordion-folded paper, describing their journey from the land of the ancients, wandering until they found home. It was a copy, of course, not the original. But probably worth some money. Diego might not be pleased about this. It can always be returned.
Her face brightened. “The other one is from me. I made a painting for you!”
Frida only gives paintings to people she has loved. It was unexpectedly hard to keep from crying as she fetched the crate from the other room and lugged it in. It must be a small portrait; the outer crate is only the size of a suitcase, easily managed with regular baggage. But heavy as lead, for its size. She must have put a lot of paint on that canvas.
“Unfortunately you can’t see it, I’ve already packed it up to go. I hope you’ll like it. Write and tell me what you think. But you have to wait until you arrive in your new life. This is very important, okay? You mustn’t peek. This is my gift, so don’t defy me. Don’t open this damn thing until you get to your father’s house, or wherever you end up. Okay, promise?”
“Of course. Who would defy you, Frida?”
“And don’t get it mixed up with the others. Look, I had the man print your name on the outside of the crate to be sure. You have papers in the folder to get it through customs, the same as the others. But don’t give it to the museum by accident.”
“Are you crazy? I won’t forget.”
“Yes, I am crazy, I thought you knew.” She stared at the crate. “Look at that, it’s an omen. You and I came into life through the same doorway, and now you are supposed to go through this one for me. It’s your destiny.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Your name. For me you’re just Sóli, I forgot you’re Shepherd. You were meant to be the pastor de consignación.” The shepherd of the shipment.
Eight paintings, a suitcase of Viyella socks and milk of magnesia. And two gifts, from people whose faces already slide backward from memory as the train climbs north.
Oh, the little stolen man. Forgotten until just now. Even he is left behind, the police must have taken him in the sweep, with everything. It’s a pity. This train might be just the thing he was looking for, those thousands of years. A long, narrow channel through darkness, a tunnel through the earth and time. Take me away to another world.
More memories bubble up every day. The sea cave in Isla Pixol, cold water on prickly boy-skin. Images, conversations, warnings. The first time seeing Frida in the market with Candelaria: What was she wearing? Mother in the little apartment on the alley off of Insurgentes. Billy Boorzai. The first days in Mexico City. Isla Pixol, the names of villages and of trees. Recipes and rules for life from Leandro: What were they? Whom did Mother love, and what made her so happy that day in the rainstorm? The reef full of fishes, what were their colors? What lay at the bottom of the cave? How long did it take, exactly, to swim through it without drowning?
The notebooks are gone. It must have been like this for Lev at the end, with his past entirely stolen. A lifetime of people, unconfirmed by their living presences, or photographs or descriptions in a notebook, can only skulk in the corners like ghosts. They shift like chimeras. Careful words of warning reverse themselves like truth and newspaper stories, becoming their own opposites. An imperfectly remembered life is a useless treachery. Every day, more fragments of the past roll around heavily in the chambers of an empty brain, shedding bits of color, a sentence or a fragrance, something that changes and then disappears. It drops like a stone to the bottom of the cave.
There will not be another notebook after this one. No need. No more pages piling up. Oh, the childish hope of that. As if a stack of pages could someday grow high enough that a boy could stand on top of it and be as tall as Jack London or Dos Passos. That is the sorest embarrassment: those hopeful hours of typing through the night shift while Lorenzo’s boots tapped overhead on the roof, all of our hearts bursting with the certainty of our own purposes. No more of that, never another typewriter. Accumulating words is a charlatan’s career. How important is anything that could burn to ash in a few minutes? Stuffed into an incineration barrel at the police station, set on fire on a chilly August evening—maybe an officer warmed his hands, and that is the use of that. Better to roam free like a chicken with no future and no past. Searching only to satisfy the hunger of the present: a beetle or lizard snapped up, or perhaps one day, a snake.
Harrison W. Shepherd leaves Mexico with his pockets full of ash. An emancipated traveler.
PART 4
Asheville, North Carolina
1941–1947
(VB)
ARCHIVIST’S NOTE
My name is Violet Brown. Was, I will say. When you read this I’ll not be living. I will explain that directly.
If I sound colorful, I am not. It’s nought but a pair of names, stamped on me by two people who never met. First, my mother. She was fond of romantic novels with “Violets” in them. She was tubercular and passed when I was young. The second name was from my husband Freddy Brown, who came and went quickly through his time also: lost in the great flood of 1916. The swell of the French Broad River wrecked most of Asheville that time, including the Rees Sons Tannery, where he worked. I was widowed the same year as married, yet still am known to this day as Mrs. Brown. A woman can be marked by others: embossed is a good word for it, one of a great many taught me by Mr. Shepherd. He remarked once that I had been embossed with names like an address on a package, by people who didn’t know the contents but still got to decide how it would be sent.