Irma Voth

TWO

I SPENT THE REST OF THE DAY cleaning the house and milking the cows and embroidering dangerous words onto the inside of my dresses, words like lust and agony and Jorge, and baking bread and yanking vegetables out of the ground, and making apple sauce with the apples that my aunt from Campo 4 had left for me at the end of the driveway with a note that said even sinners need to eat and a religious magazine with a headline that read the only way to heaven is to admit that you are a complete failure, and washing the windows and burning stuff and poisoning snake nests and killing rats. I didn’t see Aggie for the rest of the day. I knew she was mad at me. I could picture her stomping around the house and being sassy to everyone and brandishing her useless weapon.

That night I took off all my clothes and examined my body. I had forgotten about it. I poked at it like a doctor would and asked myself did I feel this and did I feel that? Then I looked at my face in a small mirror and tried to make the two vertical lines between my eyebrows disappear by stretching the skin away on either side. I brushed my hair until my arms ached and then I draped it over my breasts like Eve when she was being flirty in the Garden.

I still had no power. I couldn’t find the flashlight. The silver eye of God was right outside my bedroom window. I heard music coming from the filmmakers’ house, by now Marijke the German actress would have arrived, and I fell asleep alone and naked in my bed.

The next morning there was a knock on my door. It was a boy wearing narrow black jeans and enormous white sneakers. He said he was Miguel, Diego’s assistant, and I should come to the house immediately. Diego needed to explain things to Marijke before they began shooting and he needed me to help him do that. Miguel was very polite. When you are ready, he said. I told him I had to milk the cows first and he frowned. He asked me if he could help because Diego was already vibrating and we needed to hurry. There are sparks flying off him in every direction, he said.

What’s that? I asked him. He was holding something in his hand.

A two-way radio, he said. Listen. He pushed a button on the radio. He put his finger to his lips.

We heard voices, one in particular.

Who’s that? I said.

It’s Diego, said Miguel. He pointed at the filmmakers’ house.

Is he angry? I asked.

No, said Miguel, it’s a motivational speech.

I told Miguel I’d do my milking fast but alone and be at the house in half an hour. I told him that if Diego needed to tell me things before that he could come see me in the barn and talk while I milked. He could bring Marijke if he wanted to.

Roger, said Miguel. Is that how you say that?

Roger? I asked.

Yeah, in Canada. They said you were from Canada?

I left when I was thirteen, I said. Maybe over and out?

Over and out, Irma, said Miguel.

Okay, I said.

Miguel took off and I stood in the sunshine for a couple of warm seconds trying to think of other coded ways to say yes, I understand, goodbye.

Half an hour later I averted another attack from Oveja by befriending him with wieners and applesauce. For a soldier turned artist he was still surprisingly aggressive.

The filmmakers had tied plastic bags filled with water all around the front porch of their house to keep the flies away. The bags of water sparkled in the sunlight like little chandeliers. I stood outside the door poised to knock while Oveja lay on the ground beside me devouring my leftovers. Then the door opened on its own, well, not on its own but from the inside and all the shouting stopped and Diego came over and kissed my cheek and took me into the huge kitchen to meet the crew.

The house that used to belong to my shy farmer cousins was now inhabited by tattooed artists who lay around smoking and drinking espresso and arguing about politics and camera angles. Diego asked me if I liked the music. I nodded. Have you heard of Tuberculosis? he asked. I nodded again. They’re my favourite band, he said.

One by one they all got up and kissed me on the cheek and introduced themselves to me in Spanish or English or both. I didn’t see Miguel anywhere. Diego explained to me each of their responsibilities. The camera, the sound, other things I had never heard of. We are creating a small world, he said. A world that is more real than the one we know. He told me that he had just discovered that a very important piece of the camera was missing. Show me your thumb, he said. I held it out to him. It’s this small, he said. But it’s the difference between life and death. Can you do your farm work without your thumb? he asked me. I shook my head. I thought of how annoyed Jorge would be if I lost my thumbs. Diego told me that two of the filmmakers, including Miguel, had driven to El Paso to pick up a replacement part that was being sent from Los Angeles.

It’s an old Russian camera from the sixties, he said. It’s difficult to find parts. Now we have to wait for them to come back. It’s excruciating but we must be Zen about it.

I was so nervous. I felt like a moron. I stood there staring at them. I felt conspicuous in my long dress. I could feel the bobby pins from my doak stabbing me in the head. I could smell the cow shit on my shoes. I felt like Jonah after he’d been spit out of the whale onto dry land en route to wicked Nineveh. I didn’t know what to say. There were no women in the house.

Where’s Marijke the German star? I finally blurted out.

Diego whispered in my ear. She’s in her room, crying. Let’s go speak to her now. We walked down the long hallway to the back of the house. There were six or seven bedrooms that we passed to get to the very end. Diego pointed at each bedroom and told me which of the crew it belonged to. Somebody has painted an upside-down cross on mine, said Diego. Irma, did you know that Saint Peter asked specifically to be crucified upside down?

Nope, I said. I looked at Diego and smiled. It was a long hallway that led from Biblical times to the present and back again.

Out of humility, said Diego. To differentiate himself from Jesus Christ. The blood would have pooled in his head. I nodded. But I think, said Diego, that my crew meant it to be the sign of the Antichrist. They’re funny guys.

Marijke had been given my aunt and uncle’s former bedroom, the biggest one. Even the furniture was the same, and the bedding. My cousins had left in a hurry, apparently, and according to my dad it was because Wilf, the older boy, was a narco and about to be eviscerated by some rival narcos. My dad thought everyone who left Campo 6.5 was automatically a narco because why else would they be running away if they weren’t narcos. If my dad’s assessment was accurate this place was teeming with narcos, and not just garden-variety narcos but narcosatanics in search of sensations (like Jorge, allegedly), bored with drinking blood from skulls and poised to bolt for bigger thrills while the rest of us were in it for the long haul, working hard and honestly for very little money, the way God meant for us to be. But I didn’t believe it. I think my uncle got a job selling cars in Canada and Wilf wanted to study the violin and my aunt thought it would be cool to get a perm. But who knows. Maybe they’re a family of drug lords now, throwing bodies out of helicopters and bowling with the heads of double-crossers. That would be my father’s theory.

Marijke was beautiful, strangely beautiful, like Diego had said. Everything about her seemed elongated, firm and far-reaching, like a tower crane or a tall, flightless bird. I imagined cowering under her wing in the rain. She was a Mennonite but she dressed differently than me. She dressed the way I had dressed in Canada, sort of. She had on skinny black jeans, like Miguel’s, and a green T-shirt. She wasn’t crying anymore. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, on my aunt and uncle’s bed, and smoking a slim Vantage cigarette. Diego greeted her in Spanish and kissed her cheek and she murmured something and smiled at me and asked me, in German, if I was the translator. I told her yes and we shook hands and then Diego said he’d leave us alone to talk.

What did he say? she asked me.

He just said hello, how are you, I said.

He’s very polite, isn’t he? she said.

Yes, I said. She looked around the room and then she walked over to the window and stared out at the yard. She was quiet, looking, and then she turned around and smiled at me again.

How old are you? she said.

Nineteen, I said. How old are you?

How old do you think I am? she asked.

I don’t know, I said. Thirty?

I’ll be forty-one in three weeks, she said.

You don’t look forty-one, I said.

That’s because something very traumatic happened to me when I was fourteen and as a result of that trauma I was prevented from moving forward, she said.

Oh, I said. But you will be forty-one in three weeks?

Technically, she said. On some level I’ve been alive for forty-one years but on other levels I stopped progressing at fourteen.

What happened to you when you were fourteen? I asked. I sat down on the bed beside her and she handed me her pack of cigarettes.

I’ll tell you another time, she said. I have a son who isn’t much younger than you.

How old is he? I asked.

He’s sixteen, she said. But spiritually he’s much older. I’d say closer to eighty.

I hope that someday somebody asks me where I was when I smoked my first cigarette so that I can tell them that yeah, well, you know, I was in my aunt and uncle’s bed with this fourteen-year-old German actress who had an eighty-year-old son. No big deal. Marijke talked about her son, about missing him. She told me that she was worried that maybe she had been too much of a friend to her son lately and not enough of a parent.

Friends are good, she said, but sometimes a kid needs someone just to say hey, don’t inject that, or whatever.

Are you from Russia? I asked her.

Yes, she said. I was born there but the place where I was born doesn’t exist now.

What do you mean? I asked her. I was having a hard time following this conversation. I knew more about the social significance of birdsong, I realized, than I did about human interaction.

We talked about Diego and the crew and we talked about the script which I hadn’t seen but which she told me was full of little drawings that accompanied the text and that she thought she’d be expected to take off her clothes for one or two scenes.

Do you want me to tell Diego that you don’t want to take off your clothes? I asked her.

No, no, she said. That doesn’t bother me. It’s his story.

What is the movie about? I asked her.

Agony. And swimming. I don’t know. I can’t quite figure it out from the pictures and it’s written in Spanish.

She asked me if I wanted to see the script and I said yeah but then she couldn’t find it in her room and didn’t want to go out to the main room to see if she’d left it there because she’d be expected to socialize with a bunch of people she couldn’t communicate with beyond tequila and danke schön or learn how to juggle devil sticks or whatever they were doing in there.

I should go, I said. I was worried that Aggie would come looking for me here.

Why? said Marijke. You’re nineteen years old! Are your parents that strict?

No, no, I said. My husband.

What? said Marijke. You’re married?

Yeah, I said.

Does your husband mind that you’re working as my translator?

No, I said. Not really. Well, actually, he doesn’t know about it. He’s been away for a while.

Well then, how would he be worried? she said. Why should you go home? She put her finger gently on the bumpy ridge between my eyes. Where your source of energy begins, she said. She kneaded the bumpy ridge gently with her long finger. I tried to speak and she said don’t speak now, notice the light. Do you notice the light?

I don’t know, I said. I have to do the milking or the cows will explode.

Is your husband a good kisser? she asked.

What? I said. Jorge? I don’t know. I have nothing to compare him to.

We were quiet then, smoking, thinking about Jorge. At least I was. I think he might have been a good kisser. I pledged to tell him that if I ever saw him again. The cigarette was making me feel dizzy and I was trying not to cough.

Have you heard of the four-part cure, Irma? she asked.

No, I said. Cure for what? I stood up and looked around for a place to put my cigarette.

Here, said Marijke. She took it and put it in a glass of water next to her bed.

She said she had googled a new philosophy, a four-part cure, that would help her to live life on life’s terms. She laid it out for me:

Don’t fear God, she said.

Don’t worry about death.

What is good is easy to get, and

What is terrible is easy to endure.

I’m quoting, she said. It’s Epicurean. From a thousand years ago. People misinterpret Epicureanism these days. They misinterpret everything.

Plus, she said, I’ve learned that thoughts are atoms flying around in totally random patterns.

Oh, I said. They are?

That’s all they are, she said. It’ll help me in the desert. And I do believe in my soul. Anxiety’s the killer.

Yeah, I said. That’s true. Can I ask you a question?

Anything, she said. She squeezed my red, chapped hands and the room suddenly smelled like milk.

Why were you crying before? I asked.

Oh, that, she said. Okay, here’s the thing. It’s true that I have a new cure that I’m counting on to get me through life and it’s true that I’m a little bit tough but the reality is that I’m a middle-aged woman in the middle of nowhere, a Mexican desert for God’s sake, about to do something I have no experience doing and I’m feeling very, very alone and unsure and ridiculous and afraid.

Well, why did you agree to be in the movie? I asked her.

I’m not really sure, she said. Why did you agree to be my translator?

I’m not sure either, I said.

Well, I think I do know, actually, she said.

Yeah? I said. Why?

Because we were asked to, she said.

Oveja was stoned and following me from a distance. Elias, the cameraman, had told me on my way out that Oveja had eaten his stash of pot and that it had made him more philosophical. He’ll think twice before he attacks, he said. Elias made me laugh. He didn’t stop talking, like he didn’t care that silence was supposedly golden, his currency was different. He had bought himself some clothes from the store in town, Wrangler jeans and a plaid shirt and work boots. Now I’m a Mennonite, he said. He told me that when he was a boy in Mexico City he had learned about Mennonites. He had seen some of them selling cheese on the streets and he had wanted to be one. Elias told me that he had even drawn a self-portrait of himself as a Mennonite in a bathtub. It’s remarkable, he said, that now I’m making a film about them. He showed me a photograph of himself as a little boy on a beach in Acapulco. See that? he said. He told me that when he was a little boy he had an ass but that somehow, along the road to adulthood, he had lost his ass. Do you see? he said. He turned around so I could look at him. I thought he did have an ass but a small one. Look at Wilson, he said. He’s got two asses and I have none. That’s not fair.

Wilson ignored him completely. He was writing something down. Then he looked up and smiled at me and shrugged his shoulders. I’m Wilson, he said. That’s fine, I said. Why did I say it was fine for him to be Wilson? I wanted to go back and tell him that I was Irma. But he knew that.

Diego asked me, before I left for home, if Marijke was okay and what we had talked about. She’s fine, I said. Diego told me that the others had returned with the essential camera part and that tomorrow morning, early, we’d start shooting.

I was less afraid of Oveja now that he was a philosopher but I was nervous when he followed me home. I imagined his brown teeth sinking, pensively, into the back of my leg in search of something elusive. I thought about what Marijke had said. Oveja, I said, would you please stop following me? Asking didn’t change anything with dogs.

Aggie was standing like a thief in the night at the dark end of my driveway. Her hair was tied back tightly, viciously. Her head shone like an egg.

What’s wrong? I asked her.

What’s that? she said, pointing at Oveja.

What’s wrong? I asked her again.

Everybody hates you, she said. She kicked a bit of sand in my direction. Oveja sighed. What was the point. Stars fell.

That’s not true, Aggie, I said. They don’t care enough about me to hate me. You’re the only one who does.

I don’t hate you, said Aggie.

I know, I said. How do you like my new friend?

He’s hideous, said Aggie. He’s an asshole and he stinks like shit. I hope he gets run over by a baler.

We stood quietly and stared at the night. We were living in a dark, empty pocket. Not even the Hubble telescope could spot us on the earth’s surface now.

Oh, c’mon, Aggie, I said. Stop crying. I wanted to tell her about the four-part cure. I wanted to convince her that everything good was easy to get and all that was terrible was easy to endure.

Hey Aggie, I said, you know what?

What? she said.

Oveja’s stoned right now and thinks he’s a philosopher. When it wears off he’ll go back to attacking people. I don’t think we have a lot of time. Then Aggie told me that her friend Aughte’s dad, Alfredo, was going to play the husband in the movie. That Diego had promised him and his wife and kids a two-week all-inclusive resort package in Cancún when it was over and now everyone was mad at him too, and maybe after the movie they’d all move to a colony in Veracruz and she’d lose her best friend and Alfredo would find out that I was working for Diego too and tell our dad and that would be it, curtains.

And Mom’s pregnant again, said Aggie. And doesn’t want to get out of bed and doesn’t smile anymore and I have to do everything now and Dad just yells and prays and I have chigoe bites all over my legs. So, why did you have to be such an idiot and go and marry a cholo?

He’s not a narco, Aggie, I said. Let me see.

She lifted her dress a bit. There were ugly red sores all over her ankles and shins where the fleas had burrowed beneath her skin.

Let me sleep at your place tonight, Irma, please?

That night I had a dream about my mother and the next morning I saw her for the first time in months. I was up early, ready to start my new job, and I was standing in my yard waiting for the sun also to rise and warm me up. In my dream I was thinking about my dad yelling and praying and wondering if he got them mixed up sometimes and forgot who he was talking to. In my dream I looked at the road and there was my mother walking slowly, proud and majestic, or maybe just exhausted, like one of those giraffes you see briefly in shimmering sunlight on the savannah. She didn’t look real and for a second I thought my mind had conjured up the thing it craved, the way a pregnant woman cries so she can taste the salt her body needs. Which is actually a lie my mother told us to explain away all her tears. But I was thinking about that stuff while I was running and then I was hugging her and I knew she was real because she was holding me so close to her it hurt and I was coughing trying to catch my breath and I could smell fresh bread and soap. I touched her stomach. She was farther along than I had thought.

Another one? I said.

Is Aggie with you? she said.

She’s still asleep.

Send her home now, Irma, quickly.

I wanted to tell her about my dream but she had already begun to walk away and I stood there, like always, like forever it seemed, in the middle of the road waiting for something or someone to revive me, God or a parent or my husband or any of those things or people or ideas or words that by their definition promised love.

Diego suggested I keep a diary of “the shoot” after I mentioned a few things that Marijke had wondered about. For instance, why her character would be serene all the time. Was she in a depressive fog or not quite human or just plain stupid? He told me that he found it easier to understand certain ideas when he wrote them down or captured them on film and that I could try to do the same thing by keeping a diary of the shoot rather than by worrying about his ideas. Or something like that. He gave me a black notebook and a pen with a small light bulb on the tip.

Does this pen light up? I asked him.

Yes, there’s a switch, he said. It doubles as a flashlight.

Thank you, I said.

The first thing I wrote down in my new notebook was:

YOU MUST BE PREPARED TO DIE!

That’s what Diego told us this morning before we headed off to our first location. This is commando filmmaking, he said. The little red dot in the white of his left eye shone brighter than usual, like fresh blood on snow.

This is guerrilla filmmaking, he said. When it’s time to work, it’s time to work. If you’re not prepared to risk your life, then leave now.

Irma, he said. Are you afraid?

Of dying? I said. I laughed out loud.

What is he saying? asked Marijke.

He wants us all to have fun, relax and be brave, I said.

I ran my fingernail over the leathery cover of the notebook and tried to carve my name into it. Then I thought to use the pen. I wrote my name on the inside cover and then crossed it out. I was afraid that my father would find it. I traced my left hand on a blank page and then filled it in with lifelines that somewhat resembled my own.

Diego has put Marijke into a dress like mine and tied her hair back with a kerchief and scrubbed off all her makeup. I explained to her that the first scene we’d be shooting was the family in their farmyard checking out a new tractor. We’d have to drive about an hour to the farmhouse where the scene would be shot. She stood in the yard like a smoking tree while the rest of us carried the equipment to the trucks.

Then Alfredo showed up with his wife and kids from Campo 3 a mile away, and they were not happy. I waved to them because I’ve known them all my life and Peter, the little boy who doesn’t know any better, waved back. His older sister, Aggie’s friend from school, pulled his hand down. They stayed in the truck and stared away at something. Alfredo ignored me and went over to Diego and told him that he had to quit.

What do you mean, quit? said Diego. What are you talking about? We haven’t even started!

Alfredo told Diego that he was getting too much pressure from his wife and his parents. They didn’t want him to act in a movie and it was taking him away from his work digging wells and his wife was jealous of his movie relationship with another woman.

Como lo arreglamos? said Diego. He wanted to know how they could work things out. Alfredo shrugged.

Diego smiled at me and then took Alfredo’s arm and led him away behind the barn to talk about it and everybody standing around heard them yelling at each other in Spanish. Oveja went running around to the back of the barn to see what was going on and I heard Alfredo say he’d rip Oveja’s jaw out and crush it under his truck tires if he came any closer. Then Diego yelled at Wilson to come and get Oveja and tie him to the pump.

What’s the problem? Marijke asked me.

Nothing, I said. Diego is preparing Alfredo for his role.

At first Diego pleaded with Alfredo and then he was shouting, saying he had thought they had an understanding, and then he changed his strategy and appealed to Alfredo’s ego (There is nobody, NOBODY, but you who can give this part the depth and humanity that it demands) and then he shifted his position again and offered him some more money and shortly after that they stopped yelling at each other and emerged from behind the barn and Alfredo went over to his wife and kids and talked to them and they drove off without waving and without Alfredo.

I don’t want him to yell at me, said Marijke, if that’s what it takes to prepare me. I can’t handle that.

He won’t, I said, your role is different.

We all piled into the trucks and drove off to shoot the first scene. Elias was driving the truck that Marijke and I were in. In Rubio, the closest village to our campo, he smashed it into a fence trying to back up and Diego, following behind, radioed him to let me drive because I knew the roads around there. We had to wait for a while so that Diego could negotiate something with the owner of the fence. Alfredo came over to where Marijke and I were standing and asked me if my father and my husband knew I was working for Diego.

When Diego came back he suggested that Alfredo change trucks and sit next to Marijke so they could get to know each other because they did speak the same language, but Marijke said that in fact their dialects were entirely different, she was a Russian Mennonite living in Germany and he was a Canadian Mennonite living in Mexico, and Alfredo was drunk and reeked of booze and was completely unintelligible and so … no.

She just wants some time to herself to organize her thoughts, I told Diego.

What thoughts? he said. Is she unhappy again?

I drove for a long time past various campos, clusters of barns and houses here and there, and down dirt roads and through cornfields and little streams and mud and desert. Elias and Sebastian, the sound guy, were sleeping in the back seat and Wilson sat in between them writing in his notebook.

What’s he writing? Marijke asked me.

What are you writing? I asked Wilson, in Spanish, and he said stories, small stories. He said he’d like to read them at a festival in Guadalajara but he can’t now because he’s been commandeered to work for Diego and he needs the job.

Marijke, I said, does your husband mind that you’re here in Mexico working on a movie?

No, she said, not at all. I don’t think he does. Do I mind if he goes to work? Do I mind if he shits and breathes?

I thought, that’s what I should have told Alfredo when he asked me about Jorge.

Elias woke up and lit a cigarette. I forgot my light meter, he said. I’m a dead man. Wilson looked up briefly from his writing.

We drove through clouds of dust in silence. We passed a few Tarahumara Indians on the road, a mother and her daughters clad in beautiful colours. They didn’t seem to be walking anywhere. They were just there, standing brightly. I turned around to look a few times to see if they would move. I did it quickly, trying to catch them moving, but they had my number.

Marijke and I sat in an empty shed on upside-down feed buckets talking about the script and sex and the nervous system. She asked me if Jorge had wanted to have a baby with me.

I’m not sure, I said.

You didn’t talk about it?

I don’t think so, I said.

Would he make a good father, do you think? she said.

Well, I said, I’m not sure. What do you mean?

I mean would he be helpful with the baby and love it more than himself.

I was quiet, thinking of fathers, of my own and of Jorge’s, who had watched his small shoes bubble over and then disappeared.

Well, what do you think? said Marijke. Are you crying?

Diego had asked me to do Marijke’s hair like mine. I started combing it and a few chunks of it, long strands, fell onto the dirt floor. Those are my extensions, she told me. She told me they had been welded to her head with a heat gun and glue. She told me that mostly her hair would have to be braided and stuffed under her doak when she was acting but she thought there was one scene where it was required to tumble out of her kerchief and that’s when she’d need the extensions.

I had that dreamy feeling of falling, for a split second, and then losing my footing again. To regain it, I tried quickly to remember the meaning of the word samizdat. And then I heard screams. A kid came running into the shed and grabbed my hand and dragged me outside into the yard where a bunch of other little kids were standing around a four-foot tiger snake. I grabbed a rake from the shed and neatly (not to brag, but you know) sliced the thing in two and the kids stared for a while, a couple of the boys kicked at it, and then went back to their game. Marijke came outside and asked me what was going on. Well, this thing is dead now, I said.

We stood with our hands on our hips and looked at it. Marijke’s hair was half done and billowing out from one side of her head like the flag of some beautiful and indefinable region. She moved her fingers gently over the tight braids on the other side. Good job, she said.

Check this out, I said. I picked up a piece of the snake and peeled off its skin. I crushed the hard shell in my hand and showed Marijke the powder. You can sprinkle this over your food like salt, I said.

She licked her finger and dabbed at the crushed bits in my hand.

Hmmm, she said. Are you sure?

Diego called to say he needed Marijke then, to just shove the rest of her hair under the kerchief and come right now because the light was right and the Mennonites who owned the house were getting restless. The crew had set everything up and the Mennonite kids playing the Mennonite kids were in their places and their parents, Alfredo and Marijke, were supposed to talk about stuff while checking out the new tractor with the family. One of the kids didn’t want to be there and Miguel was trying to cajole him in Spanish, which the kid didn’t understand yet, and then to bribe him with chocolate. Eventually Miguel just said okay, go play, and he went out and plucked a different, more pliable blond-haired, blue-eyed kid from the crowd that had gathered around and set him down next to the tractor for the scene.

Diego asked Alfredo to remove his beer can from the hood of the tractor so it wouldn’t be seen in the shot and then he took me aside and said that this was the scene of the family together, pivotal and establishing, and must be perfect. Alfredo will tell Marijke that he has to go to town on some kind of business and Marijke will indicate through her body language that she does not believe him but that she will accept what he is saying for the sake of peace in the home. Alfredo will take a few steps then come back and put his hand on her shoulder and tell her that he loves her. Marijke will tell him that she loves him too. Okay? he said. It’s simple, right?

I nodded. Yeah, I said. Should I tell her now?

Yes, Irma, please, said Diego. We’re ready. And can you also tell her to please not look into the camera.

I went over to Marijke and told her what Diego had said about not looking into the camera.

And when Alfredo tells you that he loves you, I said, you smile a little sadly and put your hand softly on his hand and tell him quietly that you’re tired of his bullshit. In fact, no, not tired, but very close to being defeated by his bullshit.

That’s what I tell him? she said.

Um, yes, I said. Quietly and sadly.

Okay, she said.

And remember the camera, I said. Not to look at it.

On the way home Elias and Sebastian smoked Faros and shared headphones.

Irma, said Elias. Do you know Neil Young?

Yeah, I said.

You do? said Elias.

No, I said.

He’s from Canada! said Elias. He handed me his headphones and I put them in my ears and listened. I heard Neil Young singing about a sky about to rain.

What does that last part mean? said Elias.

I don’t know, I said. Then I thought about it. I don’t know, I said again.

It comes out of fucking nowhere but it fits perfectly, said Elias. I don’t know what it means either but it’s fucking brilliant. He took the headphones back and listened to another song. When it was finished he took them off and told us that the song was about this guy, he loses his way, his map, he loses his telescope, he loses his coastline! It’s so great, he loses everything, he loses his words! So he keeps singing but just this la la la la la la la la and it gets more and more joyful and builds into this incredible crescendo, it’s so happy, because he’s finally free and he’s lost but he’s free!

Marijke slept with her rubber boots up on the dash and Wilson wrote in his notebook.

Hey Wilson, said Sebastian. What are you writing about?

Nothing, said Wilson. He closed his notebook and put it on the seat beside him.

C’mon, you’re writing something, said Sebastian. What is it? A love letter? Is it about us?

No, said Wilson. Fuck off.

C’mon, said Sebastian. What are you writing? Tell us.

I’m writing about how dreams are like art and how both are sort of a conjuring up of the things that we need to survive.

That’s why I always dream about sex, said Elias.

Even if it’s an unconscious or subconscious act, said Wilson. Art, of course, is a more wilful act than a dream, but it comes from the same desire to live.

I once had a dream that I was fucking the world, said Elias. Like, I don’t know how old I was but I was in Montevideo in a house somewhere and I was bored so I wandered around and then I got this idea so I went to the back door and I opened it and stepped outside and took my dick out and started banging the night. Like, I was just banging away at the night. But the night was dark, obviously, so there was no stopping it. I mean I couldn’t see where the night ended, because of the horizons or whatever, so it was like the night was the whole world and I was fucking it.

You weren’t fucking the world, said Sebastian. You were jerking off in the dark like every other night.

No, man, said Elias. It seemed like that but it was different in my dream.

I’m talking about dreams of guilt and dreams of redemption, said Wilson.

We don’t know it but we direct our own dreams, said Sebastian. A restructuring or an un-structuring of ideas and experiences that allow for our own salvation.

Give that to me, said Wilson. You’re an asshole.

Our dreams are little stories or puzzles that we must solve to be free, Sebastian said. He was reading out loud from Wilson’s notebook. My dream is me offering me a solution to the conundrum of my life. My dream is me offering me something that I need and my responsibility to myself is to try to understand what it means. Our dreams are a thin curtain between survival and extinction.

Sebastian, said Wilson. Can I have that, please?

I like it! said Sebastian. No, seriously, that’s heavy shit that clarifies a thing or two for me.

Sebastian, said Wilson. Please?

Sebastian handed over Wilson’s notebook and apologized for reading from it. Wilson waved it all off and smiled at me as if to say, would you help me blow up the universe?

Well, said Elias, my dream is me telling me to fuck the world. That’s my art. What can I say.

Wilson stared out the window and Elias and Sebastian went back to listening to their music. I looked at Marijke. She was still sleeping. Then she opened one eye halfway and looked at me as though she was incorporating me into her dream and closed it again. I drove slowly, trying to relate everything to a dream, hoping to see my Tarahumara family again before the dream ended.