The Foreigners - Maxine Swann [24]
Next thing I knew we had stepped outside. We were in a garden, but it wasn’t just a garden. It was a whole landscape, a rooftop park. There were palm trees, a lawn, flower bushes, a swimming pool. Insects and birds flitted around.
Leonarda led me by the hand past the swimming pool to the far edge of the rooftop, which looked out over the neighboring skyscrapers. In the far distance we could see the rippling brown water of the Río de la Plata.
“All this used to be underwater,” Leonarda said. “One day it all will be again.”
She dropped my hand and ran toward the flower bushes. They were a variety of jasmine. She picked some, smelled them. I followed. We lay down on the grass. The sky turned pinker, bluer. A blot of cloud passed. I was looking at the palm trees, wondering how deep the dirt was, how the roots held. The blades of grass curved downward. They were long enough to curve, and green, so green. Were they actually even real? I sat up. Was any of this real? It was misplaced, of course, an entire ecosystem transplanted to this unnatural height. Suddenly I saw it in eerie colors, the artificial green of a mint drink, the chemically treated turquoise swimming pool. I lay back down.
“Listen,” Leonarda said, “I’ve been thinking. If you want to do this with me, I think it would be great. Together we could make the perfect being.”
seven
If I felt with Leonarda in the presence of a highly developed mind, about thirty times more active than my own, the synapses firing all at once, with Isolde, it was different, even the contrary. She seemed to know what she wanted, wealth, glamour, upper-class status, all swimming in a concoction of cocktail parties and art. At the same time, there was something unconscious about her behavior, even brute-like. She pressed forward, without seeming to understand herself in the slightest. She went after things, would butt her head against them again and again, then wander around dazed. When she was desperate, you had the same impression that she was an animal, dazed, reeling around in front of you. On the other hand, she seemed very alone and her bravado touched me. She made me think of heroines of novels I’d read, Lily Bart, Madame Bovary, a Lily with Emma’s aspirations. Going out to cocktail parties and putting on airs without a cent to her name.
Isolde and I met for lunch, we met for tea. She would call to tell me the news—the French girl had caught Ignacio, the most eligible bachelor in BA. Or she’d call in desperation, urgently soliciting my advice about one or another of the trials in her life. Bubbly, affectionate, she would sometimes call three times in a row. One guy, a Brazilian diplomat, with whom she was flirting while simultaneously badgering him for a job, put it this way—“Your phone behavior is perfect for finding work, but disastrous if you’re looking for love.”
After one of our meetings, she had arranged to see her landlady. “Oh, please come with me. I can’t face her alone today.”
I agreed. Besides wanting to respond to her plea, I’d been told about this woman and was curious.
Isolde’s entire existence in Buenos Aires was predicated on her living arrangement. Isolde’s aunt had been the lady companion to a wealthy old Frenchwoman. It was through this Frenchwoman, a fourth cousin to Isolde’s landlady, Beatriz, that the connection had been made. The unspoken requirement in exchange for an apartment where Isolde needn’t pay rent were these weekly visits. Isolde would sit by the bedside while Beatriz talked.
The apartment was in Barrio Norte, spacious—Beatriz had had five children—but now the only illuminated areas were the woman’s bedroom, the kitchen—the domain of Clara, the Paraguayan maid—and the pathway between them. The rest of the rooms