The House Of Mr Christus

Chapter One - Iguana Rains

They came to a passage with high, bare, walls broken by two doors. The first opened onto a porch and wooden staircase clinging precariously to the side of the house. The yard, Angelita spied, was withered and bound by a wall built layer upon layer with sticks and wood, and then the passage grew darker; the floorboards becoming dull and scuffed. This part of the house was uncared for. At the end of the passage, the woman opened the second door. The familiar smell of ripe plantain and lard assailed each in turn. The aroma, grown fat on endless warm nights, caught at Mrs Christus's throat, causing her to swallow, then retch, for the taste lingered on her tongue and lined her stomach. Angelita noticed nothing, for the aroma was, in fact, her own, but the man shuffling behind them smelt it and accepted it for what it was, the smell of the kitchen. They were in a small anteroom hung with onions and bananas, and in the corner stood a large tin drum of lard. A great refrigerator droned against one wall. Two doors led off the anteroom, one to the kitchen and the other to a bedroom, small and dusty.

"Your room," the woman said, motioning for her to put down her things. Disappointed, Angelita stared at her bleak room, feeling the boundaries of the two worlds. This part of the house was obviously hers, access to the front gained only through brief dusting and polishing expeditions. The one window was smudged with dirt, and, still, the room held the useless despondency of its past life.

"She was a dirty girl," Mrs Christus said. "No self-respect."

"Yes, ma'am." Angelita knew the mechanism of intonation, of polite acquiescence, and looked for the first time at her mistress, feeling dislike stirring in her heart. The woman before her was tall, her hair, backcombed to a high puff, was rusty red from heat treatments and perms. She had a mole, on the left, above her lip and her ample breasts, neatly pressed, formed a precise cleavage. Equally neat were the solidly molded body curves, tight beneath a corset.

Mrs Christus closed the door to the tiny bedroom aware of the girl's disappointment, but she felt no twinge of pity or regret. She turned to the kitchen. The girl seemed average in every way, except for her voice. There was a beauty in it that irked her. The clear notes of each sound reminded her of a flute played in the wind, and she felt that it was uncalled for in a girl of her sort. You couldn't show it like a broach or assume it like an expression. It was an insubstantial gift and knowing this made Mrs Christus feel better. She opened the kitchen cupboards with a certain pride: cups, saucers, plates, pans, shockingly new, ordinary, plain. Angelita winced, she had hoped for a discovery. Uninterested, she turned and found that the man had followed them to the kitchen and was watching her. He was looking at her with the kind of disbelief that is in itself a kind of interest. He was muttering to himself and Angelita, embarrassed, turned away.

Mr Christus had long ceased talking about anything but the most puerile of subjects, he did as he pleased and spoke mainly to himself. He had found within himself, and more so as he grew older, voices from the past reviving lingering memories, repeating over and over an eternity of words left unspoken, desires buried before they had blossomed, chances hanging tantalizingly close and remaining still untaken. At first, these voices whispered softly, beguilingly, but ignored they grew until finally, ferocious, they screamed at him. But he had learned to live with them, to cope, to answer.

"Muttering?" Mrs Christus reprimanded her husband. "Mutter, mutter, mutter! Papi, this girl will think you are crazy and I don't blame her. I think you are crazy. You hear it girl?" Mrs Christus pointed at her husband. "It's what you will have to live with."

Angelita looked again at the hunched, fat bellied, man, muttering still. He's just an old man, she thought and wondered how just a few moments ago he could have frightened her. He was even, and this she felt for sure, impotent. An impotent, old, man, she repeated and smiled at him for he was as harmless as a pet. The smile, sly as a tiger, warm as a fire, residing between maybe, yes and no, stilled the voices, turned them, with a click of a switch, off. At that moment Mr Christus realized that something had begun, a hand had reached into his darkness. He knew that the maid had brought him good news. She was hope. He tugged at his ear, chewing on this bit of knowledge, and then shuffled away, down the passage. For the rest of the day he remained in his office, a room called his but really nothing more than a junk store. He sat at his desk turning over pieces of a radio he had dismantled. He had intended to fix it, but now he looked at the pieces without comprehension, his thoughts enmeshed in the novelty of the new maid, the air about him fluting with her voice. In this room, his room, were the broken remnants of more radios, typewriters, a lawn mower, a telephone, a sewing machine, five clocks, decorations made from colored lights, hanging by wires, bulbs cracked to reveal little silver filaments. Some he fixed, some he left, and others he forgot how to put together. He opened the first drawer to his desk. It was filled with springs which he took and arranged into soldier neat lines. He opened the second drawer fingering the cogs, screws, coils of copper wire, a set of tiny screwdrivers, soldering fluid, lubricating oil, batteries, hinges, small tins of enamel paint and more stuffed layer upon layer, drawer after drawer. He intended to make something from all the discarded pieces but, as yet, he knew not what. He spied a small cracked head which, when still attached to its body, had once adorned the dressing table. Broken, it had become his and rolling it in the palm of his hand, he thought of the maid who in her small room was unpacking her few pieces of clothing. She, in turn, thought of the man whose eyes had just challenged her. He had the look of a beloved ornament fallen from favor and swept away into the recesses of a dark cupboard. His face was faded and lined and every movement spoke of neglect. She felt something for that man and wondered what it was.