Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [109]
“We never knew where it was,” Carlos said, stepping forward. “In all our travels, we’ve only heard rumors about it.”
“Come,” Mauro said then, an edge in his voice that only I recognized, “let’s eat. Our guest here must be starving.” I looked back at him in surprise, but he didn’t meet my eye.
Costas looked at Mauro gratefully, and it was then that I noticed how dirty he was, how his hair was matted against his head and the skin on his hands dark with grime. Lollie stepped up to him. “Come with us,” she said, smiling.
Costas turned to Lollie and took her arm, bowing graciously. I stood there barely able to move as I watched them walk away.
“What are you doing, Tessa?” Mauro asked sharply, turning to me. I looked up and saw the hurt on his face. He could see right through me, the way he always had. “Aren’t you hungry? Let’s go.”
Mauro’s steps were heavy and quick as we walked. I could feel the words bursting at his lips.
“This gitano, I don’t trust him,” he said, finally, in a low voice.
I didn’t speak. My world collapsed and broke open at the same time. The life I had built—with Mauro, with the circus—seemed unreal suddenly, less real than the memory of the riverboat moving up and down the pink-fished river, the rain that never stopped falling over it. I stared at Costas’s body ahead, watched the fluid way he moved, the way he stepped back and guided Lollie into the cookhouse.
When we walked inside, Costas looked up at me and smiled. His eyes were beautiful. Casually, as if it were part of his body, he lifted the camera, adjusted the lens, and snapped a picture of us walking in. Mauro didn’t even notice. We sat across from Costas, and Carlos and Lollie brought back heaping plates of roasted pork and rice for all of us. I couldn’t even look at my food.
“You’re a photographer?” I asked, shyly. I could feel Mauro tense beside me.
“Yes,” he said. “Back in Athens, I worked for a newspaper. But I take many kinds of pictures. People, landscapes.”
“Do you have any here with you?”
He looked around self-consciously.
“Yes,” said Carlos, setting down his fork. “Please show us.”
Costas looked back at me, then lifted his bag to the bench beside him. He reached in and felt around, and brought out a small, thick folder.
“Here are some,” he said. “I just carry small prints with me. I have rolls of film in my bag to develop when I get the chance.” He smiled. My heart was pounding as he handed the packet to me. I opened it excitedly, pulled out a stack of photos.
I spread them out like a deck of cards on the table. The images were vibrant, bright: a beautiful Turkish woman with a starry scarf wrapped around her head, a lime-green parrot sitting on her shoulder; two young men smoking at a café, a sign behind them like a prophecy, written in thickly slanted letters; an old Hispanic man standing next to an elaborate wrought-iron cage filled with doves, his smile crinkling across his face; waters so blue and perfect the photos themselves seemed to be wet.
“These are wonderful,” I breathed. But piercingly sad, too. I thought of the poems Mary had read to me, the thick novels that had left me gasping and in tears.
It seemed like everyone started talking at once. Costas was quiet, eating his pork and watching us.
After a few minutes he reached into his bag and set another packet in front of me. These were black-and-white, swirling photos filled with light and dark. I saw sun-bronzed fishermen hauling up nets filled with salmon, women and men dressed in flared skirts and pants whirling across an outdoor plaza, a group of dirty children standing in front of a squat building, men pushing carts of vegetables through crowded streets.
“All different places I’ve been to,” he said, “in my travels. I haven’t been home for three years.”
Lollie leaned over me, picking up a photo of a man surrounded by hanging sausages. I studied the photos, enthralled. What kind of vision would you have to have, I thought, to see these things? I flipped one photo over and almost gasped.
“Oakley,” I said, looking up at him.