Melusine

Teresa Peipins

That Underwater Place

It was easier than Natalia had imagined. In her mind, something always went wrong at the last minute; Mateu came home unexpectedly, or she would wake up burning up with fever.

Irina shook her head as they stood in the bedroom taking one last look around. "You aren't even going to say goodbye to your husband."

"I can't."

Irina dragged the heavy suitcase out into the hall. "Is that it?"

Natalia carried her violin. "I don't know if you understand."

"Mateu's a good person."

They bumped the suitcase to the elevator and rode down silently. Irina's car was parked right in front of the apartment house. Natalia willed the tears not to form.

 

There was just enough money to get home, not a cent more.  Once Natalia got there, she'd explain; she left a short note for Mateu.  She didn't believe in dragging it out, a quick surgical removal was enough. 

Her mother and her grandmother holding her, that was as far as she let herself get in her mind. Home.  She could return.  They'd say she was stupid, that she'd failed.  Once there, she'd find a way to play again.  She was rusty but she could still extract better sounds from her violin than she'd ever heard here.

 

Her mother was waiting for her at the airport.  Jevi hugged her tightly, then held her a distance away to get a look at her.  "He didn't hurt you, did he?"

"Of course not."

"He let you go like this."

"He doesn't know."

"Oh, no." Jevi squeezed her tighter.  The airport was full of strangers, nothing like the day she left Warsaw, with the family seeing her off to her new life.

"Where's Dad?"

"Work."  They picked up the luggage.  You didn't travel with much."

"Just what I brought."

 

Natalia looked at her watch.  Mateu would know by now.  She felt a pain in her stomach and  for a moment the bile rose up in her throat.

Her mother led the way to the small Fiat, illegally parked by the entrance.  She strolled by the police officer smiling just as he was on the verge of giving her a ticket.

 

"What exactly happened?"

 

Natalia had called them yesterday after picking up the ticket with Irina's credit card and promises to pay her back.  "I lost my nerve."

"Or your mind."  They  rode in silence after that.

Natalia felt a wave of happiness when she entered the house, the garden visible through the open doors.  She was allowed these few moments. Her grandmother was there, taking her into her arms.  "My darling, you're home.  Thank God." They both had tears in their eyes.  "I made some cake."

Her room hadn't changed at all, lying in wait for her return.  Natalia flung a doll off the bed, now dressed in a miniature Polish national costume, and stretched out on the bed.  The nightstand still held the last novels, some she never even finished, and a forgotten score.  She inhaled the dust and got up to open the window.  The air felt fresh and cool after the unrelenting heat of the early Mediterranean summer.

 

Her mother knocked on the door.  "Time for dinner, your father's here.”

"My baby, " he greeted her.  None of them asked the obvious questions.  Natalia ate well, stuffed cabbage leaves with rice and meat, a dish that marked this special occasion.  Granny had cooked all day and Natalia had arrived empty handed, without even a token bottle of Spanish wine.  When they finished her father passed around small glasses for the sweet strawberry liquor to drink with the poppy seed cake.

 

Her father whispered to her on his way upstairs to bed, "I'm glad you're home." He'd aged considerably in a year.  Her mother was still brisk, churning out her piano students at the conservatory.

 

The phone rang.  The sound echoed in the room, no one moved to answer it.  No one here would call this late.  Finally, Jevi got up to answer.  Her accented Spanish resounded, "Yes, she's here."

Natalia took a deep breath.  The meal sat heavily in her stomach. 

"What happened?"

"I don't know." 

"You don't love me anymore."

"That's not it.  I have to play, to work."

"How long will you be there?"

"I don't know, "she lied.  She had no intention of returning.  She broke into a sob.

"Ssssh.  Did  I do something?"

"No, no."

His voice turned cold, "You couldn't  tell me."

"I couldn't.  I wouldn't have been able to go."

"Call me when you're ready to tell me what this is all about."

Natalia crept into her room knowing everyone had listened.  Her room was darker than the flat in Manresa had ever been.  She sank into a deep sleep. 

She woke to Granny bringing her a cup of coffee.  "Did you sleep well?"

"I did."

"That's good.  It means you're where you should be."

"Thank you." The hot coffee was boiled and almost burned her mouth but she welcomed the sensation.

"You got bad habits there, sleeping late."

"What time is it?"

"Nine."

"How long have you been up?"

"Hours. Since six."

"What did you do?" She smiled as she listened to Granny's litany of household activities.

"I'd sleep more if I could.  That's what happens when you get old.  But you don't have to worry about that."

"Not yet."

"How's the violin?"

"I didn't play much."

"Is that why you came back?"

"I think so."

"Mateu is nice."

"He is, but I don't think he understands."

"And you married him." Her voice was raised as if in a question.

"He's a good lover." She surprised herself by divulging this.

"Is that enough?"

" I'll get up and make myself useful." Natalia stopped the conversation short.

"Too early for that.  Just rest.  Jevi's  at work.  Nobody will bother you except Rose.  She's coming for lunch."

"She couldn't wait." Rose was her sister, married with two children with a husband making a small fortune selling old fashioned fireplaces around Europe. 

"You look so pretty, so nice and brown." Granny patted her arm.

Natalia took the violin out of the case, carefully touching all its surfaces, as if in greeting before she stood in the corner of the dining room in a small puddle of light.  Jevi's big tabby rubbed against her legs.  She bent down to smooth his fur.  "Where were you yesterday? You didn't come to see me?" Years ago he slept with her, the weight of his small body pushing her to the edge of the bed, just like Mateu did."

She tuned the strings.  The memory of her neighbors in Manresa banging on the wall, complaining about the noise as she practiced, returned. "Like a cat in heat," the old woman below them said. She used her cane to hit the ceiling. "I can't stand the squeaking," came from the other side. 

"What's wrong with them?  Don't they have any culture?"  Natalia couldn't believe it.  Mateu talked to them but the complaints went on. Natalia enacted her revenge playing more and more discordant music ending up with Philip Glass, but then finally barely picked up her violin at all. There wasn't anywhere she could play in peace.  All of this she tried to erase from her mind.

Sergei arrived, breathless and smiling. 

"What are you doing here?" Natalia felt a flash of anger; her first day at home and Sergei could ruin it, to flood her with the past and what she didn't want to remember. 

"News like this," he shrugged, " nothing ever happens around here.  Your mother told another piano teacher.  Did you actually do it?  Leave your Spaniard?"   Natalia didn't answer.  Segei continued, " You sound good.  Sad piece."  He commented on the Chopin she'd been playing around with. "Isn't that one of Jevi's favorites?  You played it with her.  How old were you, 16?"

"I'm out of practice.  But I wanted something from home.  A little sentimental"

"Syrupy." He smiled. "Are you really staying?"

"Yes," though as she said it she felt the lack of conviction in her voice.

"You couldn't find any work there.  Was that it?"

"Leads in the beginning but nothing.  I never even got a tryout in Barcelona."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Don't tell me your contacts reach all the way to Spain."

"You never know." He looked at her bow.  "Tighten it a bit.  Maybe it got warped there in all that heat."

"Maybe the humidity. But, it's humid here." She defended herself.

They always talked about music; it had been so long since she'd talked to anyone about music.  It was a thirst satisfied, even coming from him, but she refused to give in so easily.

"Try mine," He pulled his violin out of the case,  "We'll have you ready in no time at all."

"Ready?"

"Yacob backed out at the last minute, a better offer in America.  I need a violin for the summer.  The quartet is doing Germany in August."

That explained his visit and it was exactly what she needed, a job, a justification for being here.  "I don't know.  I just played there; no teacher, no one listened. Sometimes I didn't even do that much." August with Sergei; it was music, a chance to play again, but at a price.

They played until Rose arrived, alone, since the children were in school.  "I'm interrupting.  You're not back one day and already you're at it." She smiled.  Rose had tried piano with Jevi but didn't have the stamina for it.  That saved Natalia from her mother's instrument.  She'd never have survived Jevi's exacting criticism but in the end she got Sergei which was worse.

"Keep going.  I'll talk to Granny.  Sergei, you're staying for lunch." She said it as a fact.  Rose was always bossy and now after two sons, even more so.  She acted as if Natalia's had never been away.

Rose made Granny sit down and served soup and chicken cutlets.  "How come you rate this meal?" Rose smiled at her sister.

"A year away, she deserves it."Sergei said.

"11 months and 14 days."  Natalia only counted the time since her marriage, not the months working in the north of Spain.

A silence fell over them as Sergei slurped.  "Are you still teaching?"" Rose asked him. 

"Mostly kids.  Now, mothers think they should start them as soon as they walk."

"Couldn't you do that in Spain? Barcelona, it doesn't have to be Manresa."

"I guess." Natalia was walking through minefields. 

Granny got up to bring in more of the dark rye bread.  "Don't go, they're attacking me." Natalia said.  "Let's have some wine." She picked up the bottle of Bulgarian red Sergei had brought. 

"Bad Spanish habits, with lunch no less.  A work day." But as she said it, Granny smiled.

"For you, it's a work day." Sergei pointed out, "These women don't work."

"You're telling me a five-year-old and an eight-year-old aren't work. Don't tell me you've  forgotten?" Rose protested. 

Sergei went off to class and Natalia cleared the table, sending Granny off to a nap.  "Now that's a good Spanish habit for you. In bed, not in front of the TV."

"Now why didn't you marry him?" Rose joked, not realizing how close it was to what Natalia had once wanted.

"He was married, don't you remember?"

Natalia never told her family any of the details.  Once angry at Jevi's praise of him, she almost told her, but stopped herself. Sergei and Jevi worked together at the conservatory.

"Tell me what happened?"

"What do you mean?" Natalia worried she meant Sergei.

"Mateu?  Your husband?  You know, that cute dark-haired guy."

"Nothing happened.  You won't understand anyway."

"Try me."

The wine did it; she wasn't sure how to put it but she tried.  "I wanted to die.  I know it sounds crazy. I was tired. Of everything."

"Go on." Rose said.

"I wasn't going to kill myself.  I was tired, that's all. Tired of the cold, the town, everything." Natalia repeated herself. 

"You were just depressed.  You weren't working."

"At first I tried.  Manresa isn't exactly the place for violin students. It's full of immigrants.  That's what I felt like. And that was it.  I was a housewife."

"And it was so bad you wanted to die?"

"I wouldn't have done it.  I just felt it would be easier to just, well.. " She didn't finish the sentence.

"Is he going to let you go just like that?"

"What can he do?"  Natalia pondered that very question.  The Spanish daily news showed women killed by their partners every day, crimes against women who had tried to leave.

"Come after you, take you back."

"He called last night."

"And..."

"He wants me to go back."

"Will you?"

" I can't live there. I wish I could.  Just shopping and cooking."

"He could afford that?"

"We never talked about it."  Natalia spent her money and once it was gone, cut her expenses down to the bone.

Rose sighed. "You left just without talking to him."

"What was I supposed to do?  Tell him I love him but I want to die." She closed her eyes for a moment.  His warm lips, his tongue; the flash of memory brought its own pain.

"Mother said he's coming."

Natalia had to keep him away until she could recover her self.  The phone rang again after dinner.  Natalia tried not to see him as she heard his voice, unable to disguise its pain, saying to her,  "You couldn't play here."

"I'll stay the summer.  I have a tour in Germany." She was buying herself time.

There was a pause.  "I'll come at the end of August for a week. We'll talk then.  I'll let you know when.   If you want to talk to me before that, call."

A weight lifted.  She was getting the rest of the summer.  They'd been married in June, the 25th; he didn't make mention of it.

Jevi had said it was unlucky to get married in June.  The rain in Warsaw turned the ground into a muddy soup, her white heels covered in it as she made her way to the church.  The photos decorated the flat in Manresa and even this house; somewhere there was a video documenting the event in its two or three languages, the two families barely able to communicate with each other. 

Mateu's soft fleshy hands went to work on the furniture he made.  Generations of carpenters' blood were concentrated in those hands.  They flopped at rest, carrying the extra padding underneath the callouses. Natalia was mesmerized by them. It was their width, the short stubby fingers in a sea of flesh.  Her own were delicate, long boned; her fingers extending far past his when they  put their hands together. 

           

The first time she saw the hands she was curious about the rest of him.  Or was it the nose that was supposed to hint at the shape and size of the penis?  It wasn't like she had known that many. 

 

           

Mateu imagined he'd rescued Natalia but from a distinct lack of possessions which was his standard of measure.  She didn't own much, but she had her violin, her hands clutching it, even dreaming of it, her right hand bent holding the bow, her chin permanently molded by it.

He made his own sacrifices. His family expected him to marry a local girl. If just being from outside of Catalonia was unsettling, Poland was too strange.  She came to this isolated exile, the very same one she'd struggled to get out of for years in Warsaw. 

Manresa was north of Barcelona in a rust belt of industry and textiles that had dried up, leaving behind a town with a cathedral and the typical ramblas or main street.  The buildings in the old center were beginning to be restored, someone hoping in vain tourists might come.  There was no hint of the sea, the small city was an hour away from Barcelona by train and even farther in every other way. 

Everyone in town knew her and when she went down to Barcelona.  Inevitably a neighbor would see her and ask, "You're going into the city," implying but not saying, again.  The rest of the communication was through Mateu, perhaps she'd like to try this cake, this special drink.  There was a deference brought about by a wary acceptance. 

At home they sat at the table on chairs he'd built.  Each chair required hours of work, bringing an animate quality to the objects that filled their space, almost as if his hands were caressing her at every turn.

His hands did caress, reaching a deep interior space where she lost her sense of space and time, where she entered a dark freedom, clean of thought. 

"What did you do today?" He arrived home, a scent of wood shavings and sweat, heat radiating from his body. 

Her answers rarely varied,  "I checked the paper for work." There was no job for her and most likely there never would be.  Then I had coffee with Irina." Irina was her only friend.

The answer satisfied him and he called her when he came out of the shower, wrapped in a towel.  She entered the bedroom, unbuttoning her blouse making a show of it and was rewarded by his smile.  He pulled her to him.

 

"Wood makes you horny."

"You do, everything about you." He removed her bra gently, then kissed her through the thin fabric of her underwear, teasing her.  Then finally taking them off.  It was that place, the space she only went with him, the underwater place of freedom.  She struggled to breathe again.

"I'll make dinner." She started to get up.

"No, let me.  Stay there."

"You like to see me like this, to see what you can do to me."

The table she dutifully set, trying not to succumb to the restlessness  closing in on her, banging on the windows.   She loved him so she struggled, understanding he would probably never read Szymborska or learn much about  her country.   By sheer repetition he was beginning to recognize her favorite pieces, the ones she used for practice. 

Every day he brought her flowers or some little gift he picked up on his way home from the workshop.  The gifts pierced her heart, with an equal measure of both love and pain.  The pain came from misunderstanding what he had offered.

She'd imagined living in a beautiful city on the sea, playing on stage, and she was further from that then she'd ever been in Warsaw.  She went out every day with her string shopping bag, coming home to her solitary music and complicated recipes she intended to try.  More often than not, he cooked, foods reeking of garlic, watching her anxiously to make sure she finished.  "You want me fat and sleek," she said to him. 

The Warsaw suburb where her parents lived shone in comparison to Manresa.  Warsaw was a real city with music and cafés and a life that wasn't just the sunshine and nightlife Barcelona promised.  Warsaw was her 20's, smoky rooms as a backdrop, and Sergei and her violin as protagonists.  She never dared to call Sergei hers, almost twice her age, and married. 

The illicitness she almost didn't recover from, years with him spent on tour, in hotel rooms, in lessons when they ended up in bed. And then her anger, years later, saying to him, "I was 15, how could you do that?"

Sergei answering, "Do what?"

"I loved you.  You were my teacher."

At eighteen Natalia got pregnant. Sergei had been careful with her until she was legal; that was how she viewed it later.  After all they'd been having sex for close to three years by then. She'd been raised Catholic so she felt what she was doing was wrong but she was young, her career was just beginning, and a baby was out of the question. 

Sergei took her to London for the abortion, in between concerts.  The next day she got on stage and played like she never had.  The second marked the end of Sergei.  She believed he would leave his wife and they would finally live together but that was not his plan. She tried avoiding him but the music world was too small.

 

Natalia was a sensation in the beginning.  But artists were struggling; there was little work to be had in the East; immigration seemed the only way to make a living.  First she went to Bonn and played chamber music for a few months.  Then she made it to Vallodolid in the north of Spain, in a good orchestra through a Bonn contact.  The important thing was she was working.  Madrid was close enough for an occasional visit and she managed to make some friends as she began to pick up Spanish. 

Mateu resulted from a beach holiday in the north of Barcelona.  She was traveling with Kaitlin, an American cellist whose idea of fun was to go out every night until daybreak or even later.  That left Natalia alone on the beach most of the time.  To pick up a bit of cash they were  playing with a local quartet in a hotel.  Natalia tried to think of it as expanding her repertoire; Kaitlin called it fiddle playing.

The morning after working, she felt groggy and hot and spread her towel on the sand trying to stake a claim to a tiny piece of the beach.  As soon as she stretched out, she fell asleep. She woke up sweaty and hot, dying for a swim but she looked at her things.  Robberies were far too common to risk it. 

A voice said. "I'll watch your things."

She didn't hesitate.  When she came back dripping water, he smiled at her.  His chest was matted with dark hair.  She was immediately attracted to him.  His warm brown eyes, his hands, his smile.

"Would you like something?" A vendor was passing by.  He gave her a bottle of water.  "You have to keep drinking liquids.  It's so hot."   He moved his towel closer, distancing himself from the group he was with.  "Where are you from?"  And the questions began. "Your Spanish is good.  How long have you been here?"

"Almost a year.  I play the violin. I have a good ear; I think it works for languages."

He looked at her blond hair and blue eyes, "Should you be in the sun?  Your skin is white."

"I tan." She moved the strap of her bathing suit to show him.  "Sunscreen helps," she smiled back at him.

It wasn't something she usually did, but knowing Kaitlin wouldn't be back, she invited him up to her room.  It was the heat that did it, she told herself later.  They showered together.  He made a special effort to remove the sand from her hair, from her ears.  He even tried to lick it away. She started to laugh. 

Natalia was afraid of how he made her feel; she barely knew him and to feel that intensity; a place of forgetting everything that had ever hurt.  They fell asleep entwined. When she woke, she exclaimed, "I've got to go.  I've got a concert in half an hour. They're picking me up."

"I'll come to see you." Later he confessed he didn't hear anything at all; he just watched her, the space between her chin and the violin, the angle of her elbow.  Then he held the instrument, examining its craftsmanship, evaluating what would go into making such a thing.  "What kind of wood is this?"

"Part of it is maple."

"We don't have much of that in Spain."

"It's from Rumania, an artist made it.  It's an art; you have to age the wood."

Vallodolid cut back funding and she found herself debating whether to return to Poland.   No offers came through and she felt lost until Mateu invited her to come to Manresa.  He'd just bought an apartment; they could live together.  She met the procession of his family: three sisters, two brothers and an array of nieces and nephews whose names she couldn't keep straight.

 

The winter was the hardest, colder indoors than Warsaw had ever been.  She couldn't keep up with her music or even the world of music.  Transportation was bad, concerts were at night but she tried to make contacts, to talk to people. Her papers expired and if she wanted to stay, she'd be illegal so they decided to get married.

In the beginning, she walked for hours by the sea.  On her way home she stopped by a big department store supermarket to shop so she didn't have to deal with the market in her town or even talk to anyone.  That was while she still had money and she still bothered to catch the train into Barcelona.  Other days she spent waiting for something to happen, for Mateu to come home.

Later in the winter she started Catalan classes for immigrants. Catalan was her concession to trying to fit in.  Perhaps if she spoke the language they used things would be easier.  The teacher was dull, slow moving, catching the students unaware with questions they couldn't answer.  Irina arrived, late and out of breath, making no excuses and sitting next to Natalia.  "I had to get you out of there," she told her after class.

She and Irina took to skipping class and sitting in a nearby café.  She'd come to Spain with her son.  Her husband was a lawyer she'd met in Kiev on a business trip.  Her main focus was to try to get pregnant, precisely what Natalia was trying to avoid. 

"I don't get it.  With Zig it took one fuck.  And there I was, a mom with no dad in sight." Irina's lips were bright red; she was dressed in black leather like a biker.

"Maybe it's Juan's fault."

"Shooting blanks."

"Those pants are too much.  Could they be any tighter?"

"He loves them.  The women here dress worse than the Russians."

Natalia smiled.  She was subdued in her jeans and Granny's handknit sweater.

The summer was going by too fast. Natalia had been practising for two weeks almost without stopping.  The music filled her days and penetrated her sleep.  Her sister convinced her to take a break and meet in Warsaw. They were in a café in drinking coffee in the late afternoon; it was the earliest Natalia could get away.  Natalia said, "I wanted to be loved.  To have children maybe."   Rosa's eyes filled with tears.  "I guess I'm not allowed." 

 

"It's okay," Rosa almost whispered.

"I'm busy now so I don't have to think."

"You're a musician.   That's all you need to think about."

The three weeks in Munich and Frankfort passed by all too quickly with nothing more eventful than a migraine that kept Natalia in bed one day with lights flashing in front of her eyes and a pain that dug deep into her brain.   When she wasn't playing she took long walks.

The inevitable day arrived. Natalia sensed Mateu's  presence while he was still in the air.  It was as if his hands were on her already.  She felt the desire a knot in her chest and progress further down her body.  He moved quickly through arrivals, catching her off guard in her reverie.  She was looking at the wrong door, trying to control her heartbeat by breathing deeply. He tapped her shoulder and she shrieked.  He took her hand and the electric impulse moved upwards. He held her for a long time.  She inhaled his warmth, mingled with sweat.

When they got into the car, her mother's again borrowed for the occasion he said.  "Tell me what happened."

Natalia took a deep breath. Words started to spill out from her.  She, who was usually so closed mouthed.  Mateu was silent for a long time.  Then he said to her, "We can try living in the city; I found a place in Barcelona. "

She nodded.

Teresa Peipins recently returned to the United States after living abroad and has completed her first novel set in Latvia and Spain. Her chapbook, Box of Surprises, published by Finishing Line Press, is available on Amazon.