Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [121]
Our feet sank into the ground. We walked up the riverbank and onto the earth above it. People milled around us and headed toward a path lined by trees. I saw the woman from the boat, watched as her galoshes navigated the muddy paths effortlessly, as if she were walking barefoot over cement. She ran to a tall man and hugged him. His hair was the color of peanut shells. When his eye caught mine, I turned away, embarrassed.
I recognized other people from the riverboat moving alongside us, caught snippets of conversations about their trips. Costas smiled down at me and I thought how right he looked, being there. His long coat, his thin gypsy body. His eyes were the colors of the leaves drifting all around, hanging from the trees like feathers.
We began walking with everyone else, down a path surrounded by trees. The world, the trees, everything around us was so lush. Vibrant. Soon the path opened onto a street, and Costas and I stopped in our tracks to take it all in: the twisting street lined with stores, people everywhere, the treetops jutting over the buildings like knife tips. The soft, glowing colors, the pinks and yellows and greens like hard candy piled in a bowl. I looked into the distance and saw small houses, their tipped roofs pointing to the sky.
We moved into the street, stepped up on the twisting sidewalk. Every block or so there was an opening between shops, revealing a path to the forest.
“We’re here,” I breathed, suddenly seized with joy.
The thrill of being there—seeing it all right there, straight from her voice and into the world—overtook me, made me mad with pleasure. I couldn’t drink it all in quickly enough. We passed a clothing store with bright jackets hanging in the window, a candy store lined with bins of licorice and chocolate. We passed a small grocery store crowded with people, several of whom met my eye as we went past and then quickly looked away. Many places sold fish, or rods and tackle, shimmery fish-shaped lures. One store only sold the rain hats I had seen people wearing. A tiny inn sat at the end of the street, like something from a fairytale.
It was all just as Mary had described. She’d told me about the street and the shops and the fishermen, the forest stretching behind everything. She must have been the same age as I was now, I thought, when she’d left. I imagined her standing here, the rain caressing her skin. How different it must have been for her to travel with the circus, I thought, and to fall in love with a dark-skinned man like Juan Galindo. How alive she must have felt.
We entered the inn, paid for two rooms for that night. The man at the front desk handed us our keys without a word. As I dropped my bag onto the bed, I found myself alone for the first time in days. I walked to the window and stared out at the rain-soaked ground, the sturdy people walking past, oblivious to the water running down their skin.
“Mary, are you here?” I whispered. “Is it okay that I’ve come?”
Costas appeared at the door a few minutes later. “I’m starving,” he said, smiling. “Let’s eat.” We walked to a restaurant we’d passed before, and the smell of frying fish wafted past our faces. When we swung through the screen door a moment later, our hearts were light. A redhaired waitress handed us menus. We ordered fish and wine. Fish crackled on the stoves in the kitchen, and we could hear them even from our small table, which sat just under a window looking out onto rain and mud. The waitress brought our wine and we toasted each other, drank it down. Minutes later we were served two platters with thick pieces of fish flesh spread upon them; I took one bite and felt it melt on my tongue.
“This fish is nothing like what they used to pull from the water back home,” Costas said, his face shining with pleasure.