A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

Author:Lucia Berlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374712860
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

La Vie en Rose

The two girls lie facedown upon towels that say GRAN HOTEL PUCÓN. The sand is black and fine; the water in the lake is green. Deeper sweet green the pines that edge the lake. Villarica volcano towers white above the lake and the trees, the hotel, the village of Pucón. Spumes of smoke rise from the volcano’s cone and vanish into the clear blue of the sky. Blue beach cabanas. Gerda’s cap of red hair, a yellow beach ball, the red sashes of huasos cantering among the trees.

Once in a while one of Gerda’s or Claire’s tan legs waves languidly in the air, shaking off sand, a fly. Sometimes their young bodies quiver with the helpless giggle of adolescent girls.

“And the look on Conchi’s face! All she could think of to say was ‘Ojala.’ What nerve!”

Gerda’s laugh is a short Germanic bark. Claire’s is high, rippling.

“She won’t admit how silly she was either.”

Claire sits up to put oil on her face. Her blue eyes scan the beach. Nada. The two handsome men haven’t reappeared.

“There she is … the Anna Karenina woman…”

On a red-and-white canvas chair beneath the pines.

The melancholy Russian lady in a panama hat, with a white silk parasol.

Gerda groans. “Oh, she’s lovely. Her nose. Gray flannel in summer. And she looks so miserable. She must have a lover.”

“I’m going to cut my hair like hers.”

“On you it would look like you put a bowl on your head. She just has style.”

“She’s the only one here who does. All these tacky Argentines and Americans. There don’t seem to be any Chileans at all, not even on the staff. The whole village was speaking German.”

“When I wake up I think at first that I’m a little girl in Germany or Switzerland. I can hear the maids whispering in the hall, singing from the kitchen.”

“Nobody’s smiling but those Americans, not even those children, so serious with their pails.”

“Only Americans smile all the time. You’re speaking in Spanish but your silly grin gives you away. Your father laughs all the time too. The bottom just dropped out of the copper market, ha-ha.”

“Your father laughs a lot too.”

“Only when something is stupid. Look at him. He must have swum to that raft a hundred times this morning.”

Gerda and Claire always go places with one of their fathers. To movies and horse races with Mr. Thompson, to the symphony or to play golf with Herr von Dessaur. In contrast, their Chilean friends are invariably with mothers and aunts, grandmothers and sisters.

Gerda’s mother was killed in Germany during the war; her stepmother is a physician, rarely at home. Claire’s mother drinks, is in bed or sanatoriums most of the time. After school the two friends go home to tea, to read or study. Their friendship began over books, in their empty houses.

Herr von Dessaur dries himself. He is wet, out of breath. Cool gray eyes. As a child Claire had felt guilty watching war movies. She liked the Nazis … their overcoats, their cars, cool gray eyes.

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