The House Of Mr Christus

Chapter Six - Lazario

Mrs Christus had begun to smile. Her face was being mapped by new lines appearing in the fine skin around her eyes and mouth. These lines spoke of a change from within. The daily routines which had once defined her life were losing their hold over her. Each morning, she reached for her corset but found that she did want it. A softness, like moisture on her skin, was beginning to seep into her body. Her corsets were everything this new feeling was not. They were rigid, possessing, and unrelenting, yet this feeling was yielding, forgiving.  It made simple actions, such as sewing on Samuel's shirt button, infinitely pleasurable. She washed him, mended his clothes and made sure he ate well. There was little time for anything else. The daily routine of childcare had taken over from the previous routine of fastidious hiding. A delicate vine was growing about her limbs, clinging to her in a way peculiar to love.

At first, she had questioned whether the softness was a sign of weakness, and at night she had examined her arms, her breast, and stomach, searching for clues. But finding none, she finally put her corsets aside. Dressed in a loose cotton shift, she approached Samuel. In this barest of states, she picked him up, and the shock of feeling his body against hers, without the skin of the corset for protection, made her weep. It melted her, this feeling from the heart, this sweetness. It was in her fingertips, her hair, her eyes. She peered closely at his face, searching every expression for rejection but discovering none she finally accepted her nakedness, and the secret of her frailty was shared between them. Samuel did not realize that it was for him her body had been revealed. He lay against her only partly aware of a new sensation of being engulfed by a soft, yielding surface. She was, as she had always been, someone larger than himself with stiff skirts that promised protection. And the loss of that protection was keenly felt on the few occasions when Mrs Christus left him alone in the house. On one such occasion, when he had been left in the kitchen and told to sit quietly because she would soon be back, he had immediately started to cry. He was frightened of Angelita and frightened of being left alone. He cried in a way peculiar to himself, almost mute. With his head bowed over the kitchen table, his fists to his eyes, his nose running, he had wept and the aspirated sounds of his breath was a noise so inconsolable that after an hour Angelita had banished him outside to the veranda. He had crouched down in the corner and the sound of his crying was lost amongst the clamor of birds, the wind pulling at leaves, voices carried down the street and, from somewhere far away, a rooster crowing.

From his corner, the veranda chair pulled in front of him for added security, Samuel spied Lazario climbing the stairs leading from the front gate up to the veranda. In Lazario's hand was a small package wrapped in emerald green paper. Samuel, frightened and alone, followed the slight figure into the house, across the sitting room, through the mahogany arch, into the dining room and out the side door to the passage, alive with gray shadows. Lazario stopped a moment, straining to recognize the forms dancing along the walls. His inward-looking gaze, gentle hands and slightly confused expression, calmed Samuel, and for a moment he forgot his fear.

Lazario walked to the end of the passage and turned into the ante-room. Samuel followed him and hid behind the tin drum of lard. Mr Christus, drawn by the emotions stirring in the far reaches of the house, followed a thin trail of light left in the wake of the child. It meandered gracefully through the rooms, growing brighter the closer he got to the kitchen.

Angelita, busy over the stove, was unaware of Larario behind her; unaware of Samuel watching them both. She was stirring the amber liquid, an aromatic soup, thick with crab claws. She was dreaming, dreaming about anything that bothered to enter her mind. Around her, her thoughts, peaceful and contented, arranged themselves like soft whispers. Larario was sure he heard sounds emanating from her. He thought of children playing in a wide field, their voices echoing into limitless space.