The Heartbeat of Life #4
To the devil went my apocryphal biography of the Queen of Sheba, was she annoyed by so much invention I pulled out of my sleeve?
Did the queen bristle at my telling so many lies?
Will people say that myths have value in and of themselves, float in the ether without anyone pestering them, that they have no need of some outsider stepping in to pull them down to earth?
Did I betray Goat Foot? I wanted to tell of her great deeds and ended up spinning gossip.
I wanted to touch her and she was untouchable, I wanted to write about her and ended up spitting foam.
I looked her in the face, and she was a Gorgon.
I tried to name her and she was unnameable, I flew to reach her and she burned my wings.
I pushed her toward the fire, the gallows, the cross, the scrapyard, toward defeat.
The Queen of Sheba lost her patience and left.
She doesn’t exist anymore, or only exists in psychotic, deluded minds.
My passion was a form of idolatry. Wanting to praise her, I ended up blaspheming.
When I tried to tame her, she disappeared.
I wanted to decipher her secrets and was crushed by her mystery.
I shouldn’t have named her, I should have been more careful.
Lady of Sheba, Virgin of the Almond, Regina Makeda, Queen of the Morning, you see, Zahra Bayda, the myth became flesh and showed her face, which was all too human. It was proven: All myths made flesh end up being sacrificed.
“You’re delirious again, Bos,” says Zahra Bayda, for whom any deterioration is a sign of fever. “You lost your notebooks, sure, you lost them and that’s it. Get over it, Bosi.”
“Oh, mamita linda!” I call to my mother, the loss of my writings making me an orphan again. “I’m the one who writes, what do you want me to do, I am what I write, and now I’m nobody.”
“Enough, Bos. They burned your notebooks to prevent infections. That’s just what happened. More was lost when Rome was burned.” Zahra Bayda has lost her patience.
She’s a woman who knows how to make her way out of black holes, and it drives her crazy to watch me sink.
Hypochondria isn’t her thing, her philosophy is condensed into that phrase that now strikes me as heartless: That’s just what happened.
They burned your writings? That’s just what happened, start writing them again immediately, along the way you’ll gather new stories, new people will tell them to you.
That’s how she is. Zahra Bayda is the reality that prevails.
Women showed up mutilated and sewn? Fine, she’ll undo their stitches and mend them.
A boy lost his eyes? Then we’ve got to teach him how to see through touch.
Those men are sick? Time to heal them. “You do whatever you can,” says Zahra Bayda, “and if it can’t be done, you do it anyway.
” A thousand sea stars are dying as they burn to a crisp on the beach?
All but one, because that’s the one she’ll save.
That’s just what happens. But no, Zahra Bayda, after this loss, I might not be a star that you can save.
If only I could have at least kept those messages, all the little papers the women gave me . . . I don’t yell anymore, or even complain; I’ve gone dull. Stunned by the blow. Defeated, changed. Bos Mutas, the mute ox.
Zahra Bayda brings me a coffee, strokes my head, makes a Spanish tortilla, she doesn’t know how to console me. Me, the inconsolable. All day long, I don’t say a word to her. At night I resume the jeremiad.
“Everything I’ve written, they burned it!”
Zahra Bayda gets up and embraces me. She laughs at me, full of compassion.
She’s not wrong, my melodrama is starting to verge on comedy.
On the fourth or fifth day I finally land, recover somewhat, give up, accept the disaster.
The truth is, they were papers, nothing more.
Paper, paper, and more paper. Paper, my notebook.
Paper, my thesis and all my notes, and stories, and gathered testimonies.
Paper, the letters from migrant women, their fruitless declarations of life, a shipwreck survivor’s scrawl. Smoke signals scattered by the wind.
It’s almost eleven at night. Zahra Bayda leaves me to my own devices and starts her nightly rituals, which are always religiously the same, carrying out even the simplest gestures with devotion, like lighting little incense sticks or reviewing the tasks in her planner, but the most complicated ones too, like the tongue twister she repeats like a prayer, spell, or just the pure tongue twister that it is.
She disrobes with a ceremonial slowness, revealing the hills and valleys of her body’s secret landscape.
She showers with water hot enough for plucking chickens, dries herself with her own towel—she doesn’t like to use mine or for me to use hers—and dons one of her old, worn, faded cotton shirts.
Then come the talcum powder and flip-flops for her feet.
For her face, an algae salve she makes herself; her hands, meanwhile, receive the softening effects of an expensive, elite rose cream her daughter sends from Europe.
Then comes a balsam for her hair, a long ceremony that involves going strand by strand.
As she performs this rite, I gaze at her wide, powerful back. A miller’s back.
She boils water on the hot plate and makes ginger tea with lemon and honey.
At that point, aromatic vapors already fill the room, floating church-like shadows, and she opens the windows wide.
The contrast between inside and outside temperatures gives her chills, forms goose bumps on her skin.
As a closing to her rituals, she leans on the window frame and stares out at the night for a long time, letting the moon wrap her in its halo.
I watch her and wait. She stays absorbed in her own silence, like those women in Bonnard’s paintings who bathe in light.
“Come, let’s go to bed,” she finally says, kissing my forehead.
And my forehead burns with the queen’s kiss.