Maya’s Notebook. Isabel Allende
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Название: Maya’s Notebook
Автор: Isabel Allende
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9780007482863
isbn:
“It was a bridal veil and behind it was God,” I assured him.
“What did he look like?” he asked me.
“Like a luminous spiderweb, Popo. The threads of that web connect everything that exists. I can’t explain it to you. When you die, you’re going to travel like that comet, and I’ll be right behind, attached to your tail.”
“We’ll be astral dust.”
“Ay, Popo!”
“Don’t cry, little one, because you’ll make me cry too, and then your Nini will start to cry and we’ll never be able to console each other.”
In his last days he could only swallow little spoonfuls of yogurt and sips of water. He barely spoke, but he didn’t complain either; he spent the hours floating in a half-sleep of morphine, clinging to his wife’s hand or to mine. I doubt he knew where he was, but he knew we loved him. My Nini kept telling him stories until the end, when he couldn’t understand them anymore, but the cadence of her voice soothed him. She told him about two lovers who were reincarnated in different times, had adventures, died, and met each other again in other lives, always together.
I murmured prayers I’d invented myself in the kitchen, in the bathtub, in the tower, in the garden, anywhere I could hide away, and I begged Mike O’Kelly’s God to take pity on us, but he remained remote and silent. I got covered in rashes, my hair fell out in clumps, and I bit my nails till my fingers bled; my Nini wrapped my fingertips with adhesive tape and forced me to wear gloves to bed. I couldn’t imagine life without my grandpa, but I couldn’t stand his slow agony either and ended up praying he would die soon and stop suffering. If he had asked me to, I would have given him more morphine to help him die. It would have been very easy, but he never asked.
I slept fully dressed on the living room sofa, with one eye open, watching, and so I knew before anyone else when our time had come to say good-bye. I ran to wake up my Nini, who’d taken a sleeping pill to try to get a bit of rest, and I phoned my dad and Susan, who were there ten minutes later.
My grandmother, in her nightie, climbed into her husband’s bed and laid her head on his chest, the way they’d always slept. Standing on the other side of my Popo’s bed, I leaned against his chest too, which used to be strong and wide and big enough for both of us, but now was barely moving. My Popo’s breathing had become imperceptible, and for a few very long instants it seemed to have stopped completely, but he suddenly opened his eyes, swept his gaze over my dad and Susan, who stood near the bed crying silently, lifted his big hand with effort, and laid it on my head. “When I find the planet, I’ll name it after you, Maya,” was the last thing he said.
In the three years that have passed since the death of my grandfather, I’ve very rarely talked about him. This caused me quite a few problems with the psychologists in Oregon, who tried to force me to “resolve my grief” or some similar trite platitude. There are people like that, people who think all grief is the same and that there are formulas and stages to overcoming it. My Nini’s stoic philosophy is more suitable: “Since we’re going to suffer, let’s clench our teeth,” she said. Pain like that, pain of the soul, does not go away with remedies, therapy, or vacations; you simply endure it deep down, fully, as you should. I would have done well to follow my Nini’s example, instead of denying that I was suffering and stifling the howl that was stuck in my chest. Later, in Oregon, they prescribed antidepressants, which I didn’t take, because they made me stupid. They watched me, but I was able to trick them by hiding chewing gum in my mouth, where I stuck the pill with my tongue and minutes later spit it out intact. My sadness kept me company; I didn’t want to be cured of it as if it were a cold. I didn’t want to share my memories with those well-intentioned therapists either, because anything I might tell them about my grandfather would sound banal. However, on this island in Chiloé, not a day goes by when I don’t tell Manuel Arias some anecdote about my Popo. My Popo and this man are very different, but they both have a certain giant-tree quality about them, and I feel protected by them.
I just had a rare moment of communion with Manuel, like the kind I used to have with my Popo. I found him watching the sunset from the big front window, and I asked him what he was doing.
“Breathing.”
“I’m breathing too. That’s not what I was referring to.”
“Until you interrupted me, Maya, I was breathing, nothing more. You should see how difficult it is to breathe without thinking.”
“That’s called meditation. My Nini meditates all the time, says she can feel my Popo at her side that way.”
“And do you feel him?”
“I didn’t used to, because I was frozen inside and I didn’t feel anything. But now it seems like my Popo is around here somewhere, orbiting around. …”
“What’s changed?”
“Everything, Manuel. For a start, I’m sober, and besides it’s calm here, there’s silence and space. It would do me good to meditate, like my Nini, but I can’t, I’m always thinking, my head’s always full of ideas. Do you think that’s bad?”
“Depends on the ideas. …”
“I’m no Avicenna, as my grandma likes to point out, but good ideas do occur to me.”
“Like what?”
“At this exact moment I can’t think of any, but as soon as I get a brilliant one, I’ll tell you. You think about your book too much, but you don’t spend time thinking about more important things, for example, how depressing your life was before my arrival. And what will become of you when I go? You should think about love, Manuel. Everybody needs love.”
“Aha. Where’s yours?” he asked, laughing.
“I can wait—I’m nineteen years old with my whole life ahead of me; you’re ninety, and you could die in five minutes.”
“I’m only seventy-two, but it’s true that I could die five minutes from now. That’s a good reason to avoid love; it would be impolite to leave a poor woman widowed.”
“With thinking like that, your goose is cooked, man.”
“Sit down here with me, Maya. An old man on his last legs and a pretty girl are going to breathe together. As long as you can shut up for a while, that is.”
That’s what we did as night fell. And my Popo was with us.
When my grandpa died, I was left without a compass and without family: my father lived in the air, Susan was sent to Iraq with Alvy to sniff out bombs, and my Nini sat down to mourn her husband. We didn’t even have any dogs. Susan used to bring pregnant dogs home. They stayed until the puppies were three or four months old, and then she took them away to train them; it was hard not to get attached to them. Puppies would have been a great solace when my family dispersed. Without Alvy or any puppies, I didn’t have anyone to share my sorrow.
My father was involved in other love affairs, leaving an impressive trail of clues, as if desperate for Susan to find out. At forty-one years of age he was trying to look thirty, paid a fortune for his haircut СКАЧАТЬ