Lethe Bashar is on study abroad. He moves into an apartment with a sixty-five year old Senora. Within two weeks, he undergoes an extreme form of culture shock. Between quitting classes, falling in love with his Senora’s maid, smoking hashish, and meeting a group of native Spaniards, an innocent study abroad program turns to living dangerously.
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You might think that Lethe grieved over the news that he would have to leave the Senora’s apartment, but he didn’t grieve at all. Their relationship had become strained over the last couple weeks. Lethe continued to come home late on the weekends and it was still not clear whether the Senora heard him enter her apartment at night. Sometimes he stayed up nearly an hour afterward with the lights burning in his smoky room. Noises rattled from underneath his door. The sound of his chair moving back and forth on its wobbly legs and the grating of his mother’s credit card probably aroused some suspicion. A VISA card with silver lacquer shimmered, cutting into the night.
On these horrible nights, one part of him was drunk and hungry to commit small crimes. He didn’t care if she found out or not. The Spaniards had introduced him to a beautiful thing. And slowly the abundance of moments he was sharing with this substance gave him the sweet, solitary pleasure of a hobbyist absorbed in his craft. He loved cutting it, pressing it, and staring at it under the desk lamp.
The other side of him had a full memory of his interactions with the Senora. It seemed like they had shared a special bond together and he owed her respect. After all, the Senora brought Lethe out of his misery with her suggestion that he quit school. From the beginning, she passionately protected him and never denied him anything. If she was skeptical toward his recovery, she never showed it.
But the strain was there and it was hard to ignore, especially when Lethe was committing these petty crimes in the night.
On the last day, they exchanged gifts. Lethe had gone to the commercial center, el Corte Ingles, earlier in the afternoon. He wanted to buy the Senora a cordless phone; she’d complained so many times about tripping on the long wire that extended between the rooms. The idea to buy her a cordless phone was magnificent and he knew that whatever strain may have existed between them in those last couple months, the new telephone would erase everything.
But he didn’t expect to receive a gift from her. The Senora’s face was livelier that day, as if she had been outside getting some exercise. There was a flush of pink above her eyelids and her normally coarse expression blossomed into sudden happiness.
The color of her eyes remained the same, however, bluish green, like the glass in an aquarium. She handed him a long, flat box. “She bought me a tie,” he thought. But then, upon opening the box, he discovered it was a scarf. He ran his fingers over the gauzy fabric and lifted it to his face. Autumn-colored, the most beautiful scarf he’d ever seen.
The door opened abruptly and Donte appeared with his hemp purse hung around his shoulder.
“Are you leaving today?” Donte asked, interrupting their gift exchange.
“Yes, after dinner I’ll go.”
“Have you found a place to live?”
“I found a pensione in el Plaza del Sol. A small, one bedroom for under a thousand pesetas a night.”
“Plaza del Sol, that’s where all the parties are, right?”
“I guess so. Most hotels are in that district.”
“It’s a good place, he’ll like it there.” The Senora said.
“Well, don’t have too much fun,” Donte added, walking toward his bedroom.
The Senora let out a shriek. “Ah caramba, nino, you shouldn’t have!”
It was a generous gift, but he felt it was necessary. He felt he had to make up for something. Like he was in debt.
“Do you like it?”
“I love it. And now I can get rid of that wretched cord. I was so worried I was going to inadvertently strangle myself one of these days. But now you’ve bought me a cordless. How thoughtful of you, nino!”
She held the box in the air, turning each side and studying the glossy pictures. “Let’s set it up!”
The Senora seemed tired from cooking and cleaning, as if her obligations to these young men were wearing her down. Right when she took her seat for dinner, however, she grew lively again, and said a small prayer, which she never did. Lethe and Donte knew her to be an agnostic. But tonight she prayed.
“Dios, please take care of Lethe while he’s living here in Spain, not under this roof but protected in an apartment in plaza del Sol. Watch over him Lord, and keep him safe.”
They began eating. The bread was passed and Donte broke off the first piece. Lethe carefully ladled the vegetables onto his plate and offered some to the Senora.
“I assume you finished the Spanish Bible while you were here,” she remarked peremptorily.
Lethe leaned back in his chair, so as to see the Senora’s full figure against the curio cabinet. Food stuck between his teeth and he pretended he was chewing. “No,” he said. “I stopped reading the book.”
“You stopped reading?”
“I made it to the second volume, but then . . .”
“I know, I know,” she lowered her eyes on her soup. “Let me tell you how the story ends. So you will know the message behind it.”
“I thought you said there is no single message to the book, that everyone comes to it from a different place and learns something different as a result.”
“I did say that, nino. But don’t be smart. I want you to know the message that is important to me.”
Donte and Lethe put aside their food for the moment. Both craned their necks over the table and hung their heads in curiosity.
“Volume 2, Chapter 74. Don Quixote comes down with a fever and he’s lying in his bed at his home in la Mancha. All the characters are there who were there from the beginning, the priest, Carrasco and Master Nicolás. Don Quixote tells them, ‘I am in my right mind, now, clear-headed and free of the murky darkness of ignorance, brought upon me by my continual, bitter reading of those abominable books of chivalry.’”
“We think he is saved. We think he is better now.”
“But Cervantes will not concede to our wish. We all want to see Don Quixote better. We all want to see him sane. We want him to recover from his madness, his addictions, his fantasies. If he dies in a state of ignorance, then it means . . . nothing was learned from all of these violent episodes, from all the death along the way.”
“So does he die?”
Donte smirked, as if holding back a secret.
The Senora fixed her gaze on the balcony door. It was the first time Lethe had ever seen her confused.
“What’s wrong, Senora?” Lethe asked.
“Nothing nino, nothing.”
All three of them glanced at each other, pretending to know what was going on.
“I forget, nino. That’s all. I forget how the story ends.”
The Director called the next morning when Lethe was still in bed. The Senora was slicing vegetables in the kitchen, full of anxious vigor. “Si . . . si . . . un momento.”
Lethe crawled out of bed and came into the kitchen. He looked like a ball of melted wax; expression hadn’t seeped into his face yet. He took the phone from the Senora’s hand and pressed his ear against the garlic-smelling receiver. The Director’s gruff, commanding voice greeted him: “Good morning, Lethe.”
“Good morning, Director.”
“Sleeping in again?”
“I had a late night last night. Hanging out with the Spaniards, you know.”
“The Spanish don’t take partying lightly, do they?”
“No sir, not at all. But you’ll be glad to know that I’ve mastered the Spanish language.”
“Is that true?”
“I’m perfectly fluent thanks to my native friends.”
The sparkling conversation was beginning to wake Lethe up. The Senora handed him a glass of orange juice.
Lethe continued, “It’s because I left the Institute, I know it is.”
“Of course, your wise decision to leave the Institute advanced your learning. School is backwards, after all. Why should anyone have to attend class?”
Lethe hesitated, unable to translate the Director’s last couple sentences. “Did you hear from my new Senora?”
The Director’s mustache scratched against the receiver. With a muffled sigh, he said, “Okay then. That’s why I’m calling. Senora Raquel de la Tristeza cannot be your senora.”
“What? Why not?”
“She says it’s too late in the year for her to take you in.”
“But I thought you said you were going to help me find a senora?”
“I said I would try . . .”
“You said she owed you a favor–”
“Yes, but that was many years ago and now it seems like she’s forgotten.”
The Senora’s kitchen suddenly became hot. The bubbling pots on the stove produced an unbearable, seething humidity; and the Senora’s flighty housekeeper, Catalin, kept rushing through the center of the room with her thousand and one tasks.
“I’m sorry Lethe, I tried.”
Lethe was sweating; he had to take a shower.
“Don’t forget what we talked about.”
“I’ve already forgotten.”
“You have to leave the Senora’s apartment by tomorrow.”
After hanging up the phone, Lethe ran into his bedroom. The tiny, besmirched room with the wrought-iron balcony and the stupid poster of the clown on the wall was his. The room felt more his own than the sanitized, anonymous bedroom he’d grown up in.
He fell down to his knees and began crying. He never cried, not even when he was trying to kill himself. It was all because of his new Senora. She inspired these tears in him, a woman he would never meet, a woman he would never know. He would never know if she looked the way he imagined her to look, with nut-brown skin, a buxom chest and flowing black hair that covered her shoulders and back. The visions came to a halt before him. She was supposed to be young and beautiful. She was supposed to coddle him and have sex with him. She was supposed to cook for him. Now what was he going to do?
He could call Ricky or Alejandro and ask if he could sleep over at one of their apartments. But that might jeopardize his friendship with them. He didn’t want to ask too many favors.
Standing on his balcony, he lit a cigarette and stared down into the alleyway where the old men sat in the cool shadows protected from the heat. This was the last time he would see those old men lingering there, and it was also the last time he would look across the street to the apartment building with colorful bricks that faced his own. The flower-filled patios, the uniformed maids working in the windows, the junior piano player; he would miss life here.
Oh, goddamnit, it was good to be leaving this place. He loved the little ledge but he also despised himself for sucking up the Senora’s last remaining spirit with his needy, greedy habits. Who was he kidding? The old Senora was no more his mother than the new Senora was his sex-goddess. He got carried away with his fantasies and now all he wanted was a room of his own where he could conduct his business of reading and writing, and maybe socializing on the weekends, perhaps having visitors during the week days, but only on occasion. He remembered Veronica from the International Institute and then searched for her number. It was hiding somewhere among the school books he never opened.
His thoughts were racing as he puffed his cigarette to the very end. It was already noon. He had to look for a place to live. The Senora once told him about the pensiones in el Plaza del Sol, a district of shops, restaurants, movie theaters, hotels and apartments for rent. Quickly, he rushed to the bathroom and drenched his face in hot water–but he did not take another shower. There was no time. He had to find a place to live. He was being kicked out of the Senora’s apartment by tomorrow.
When Lethe arrived back at the Senora’s apartment it was 2:30 in the morning. The residential street resembled nothing like the rest of Madrid on a Friday night. Whereas other sections of Madrid were clamorously alive, the Senora’s street went to bed before twelve o’clock.
The irritable doorman in blue overalls was standing in the corridor. “Why do you come home so late?” He pierced Lethe with one of his angry smirks. “Don’t you know the Senora’s sound asleep? You’re going to wake up my building. Estupido!”
Lethe shook his head and passed the angry doorman’s first floor apartment. He quietly climbed the stairs.
At the Senora’s door, he turned the brass knob and leaned his weight forward just as a thief would before breaking into some old rich lady’s apartment. The nick knacks and antique book shelves, the embroidered furniture and wall-hangings projected an ambient aura, a ghostliness over the room. The Senora’s presence lodged inside these shrunken objects; she was watching him from their various locations.
If only he could be quiet . . . Every wooden beam in the apartment creaked, the door knobs whined, and a single light illuminated the whole floor. He was afraid to make any noise, and he tried to suppress his fears, but it was like being in the classroom of the International Institute. He couldn’t help himself.
He had to wash his face. Every night he washed his face.
The faucet stayed on for an extra five minutes. He was drunk. He loved the feeling of water, the inexplicable wetness of water, the incessant renewal of the ritual. He bathed in the sink, soaking his eyelashes, running the soap wildly over his neck. The shower beckoned him, but he told it “no”. It was too late for a shower. A shower would definitely wake up the Senora.
He clamored down the narrow hallway and stumbled into his bedroom. His breathing was loud. His footsteps were shameful. The wooden beams creaked and cawed underneath him, telling rascally jokes; the springs under his bed squeaked obnoxiously like a thousand mice.
He moved to his desk, an old desk from a children’s library, the Senora once told him. Out of his disheveled jacket, he removed the gift that Ricky had given him tonight and he held it in his hand for a long time. Then he unfolded the paper corner by corner.
Startled by a random noise in the street, he threw a nervous glance to the door. He glimpsed the Senora standing there. But he was only dreaming.
Once he could relax, it was beautiful, the light streaming from the sky at this hour. He threw his face back into the moonlight coming from the balcony. He looked out of his room up-side-down, with all the blood rushing to the crown of his head and the starry sky falling just below his chin.
The happiest he’d ever been in his life was when he was eleven years old. His parents sent him to an arts camp in Michigan for the summer. He went there every year after his tenth birthday, but this was the first year living some place besides home. He’d been at the camp for two weeks and this morning he was walking to the bookstore, on the other side of camp, the ‘light side’ they called it, where the girls’ division was located. On his little escape from the boys’ side, he was enjoying the freedom of being ten and a half.
Big maple trees lined the campus roads and tall concrete buildings rose up everywhere. Mr. Love said campers could expect a tornado soon, and these buildings supposedly protected the campers. The basements were sturdy and secure, but Lethe hadn’t seen the insides yet. As he moved away from the buildings and stretched his gaze to the center of campus, the people looked like dots on the horizon.
He came to an old-fashioned lamppost. The campus had these lampposts scattered throughout. He stood by the lamppost in a sort of dazed dreaminess. He turned 180 degrees and surveyed the woodsy area and the nature trails winding off toward the auditoriums.
As he was moving, everything slowed down and a ray of sunlight broke out from a cluster of leaves, almost blinding him.
With his mother’s VISA, he pushed together a second pile. Then he peeled off his smoky shirt and laid in bed. His heart was beating; he could hear it. He looked up at the ceiling and thought, “I can’t stay here any longer.”
