“Love is love, Sóli. We give greatly to receive. Don’t spit yourself out like a seed all the time. When Lev was your age, he was probably more like you than you think.”
“All right. People are ruled by love, and our kidneys. That’s my opinion, and now I really do have to take a piss. Don’t watch, please.”
“Hey, you could have found a bigger tree,” she called out. “A skinny guy like you, and you’re not even halfway hidden.”
“You could allow a gentleman the privacy of his piss.”
Frida in her dungarees lay back against the bank, looking through her black eyelashes. It’s impossible to explain how or why, but she had completely transformed. From venomous snake to friend. “If you want to write romantic novels about the Azteca,” she said, “I mean, if that’s what moves you, then you should do it.”
It was a true conversation. About whether our ancestors had more important lives than we do. And how they’ve managed to trick us, if they did not. Frida felt it helped them not to put anything in writing. The people at Teotihuacán had no written language, according to Dr. Gamio. “So we can’t read their diaries,” she pointed out, “or the angry letters they sent their unfaithful lovers. They died without telling us their complaints.”
She is right about that. No regrets or petty jealousies. Only stone gods and magnificent buildings. We only get to see their perfect architecture, not their imperfect lives. But it’s a strange point to argue for an artist whose paintings are rants and confessions. Without regrets and jealousies, she would have blank canvas.
“You’d better burn all your paintings then, Frida. If you want people in the future to think you were heroic.”
She fingered her beads and knit her eyebrows. Raised her glass up to the light and rolled the red liquid around, studying it. “I think an artist has to tell the truth,” she said finally. “You have to use the craft very well and have a lot of discipline for it, but mostly to be a good artist you have to know something that’s true. These kids who come to Diego wanting to learn, I’ll tell you. They can paint a perfect tree, a perfect face, whatever you ask. But they don’t know enough about life to fill a thimble. And that’s what has to go in the painting. Otherwise, why look at it?”
“How does an artist learn enough about life to fill a thimble?”
“Sóli, I’m going to tell you. He needs to go rub his soul against life. Go work in a copper mine for a few months, or a shirt factory. Eat some terrible greasy tacos, just for the experience. Have sex with some Mexican boys.”
“Thank you for the advice. You seem to favor foreigners.”
“Never mind about me. I’ve done everything already—nothing is left for these bones but the grave.” She drained her glass. “You’ve been so angry with me. Why?”
“Good God, Frida. Because you treat me like a child.”
She looked truly startled.
“I understand. I’m not an important person like you. Or Van, for that matter. But working for you and Diego, sometimes I don’t even feel human. I’m a mouse creeping around the shoes of giant people, trying not to get stepped on.”
“Look, if I don’t flirt with you, you should take that as a compliment. I don’t always respect myself, but I almost never respect men. They’re like flowers, all showy, a lot of color and lust. You pick them and throw them on the ground. But you I respect. I always did. From the first day I saw you.”
“You don’t even remember the first time you saw me. It was before I ever came to work in the house, years before. On your birthday.”
“In the Melchor market.” She tilted her head, but without the coy smile. “You asked if you could help me carry a bag of corn. I told you any man has the right to make a kite from his pants.”
She is a marvel or a trickster, a brilliant, terrifying friend. She divines the unknown. There will never be another Frida.
“I approve of your program, Sóli.”
“What program is that?”
“Cortés and the Azteca. Writing a true history of Mexico. I think you’re right, you should crack open the mute culture, give those boring heroes some sweat and piss.”
“Do you think?”
“Look, there’s no sense pretending history is a goddamn Homeric Odyssey.”
A brilliant red bird landed overhead, the same color as the coral-bean blossoms, resting briefly on the swaying branch before it flew away. Frida packed up the last of the meal. “It’s good we talked today. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have to get ready for a show. I’m having a real show, my own paintings entirely. Can you imagine?”
“That’s wonderful.”
“Sóli, it’s terrifying. It feels like I’ve been lying in the bathtub all this time admiring my own curly pendejos. And now a hundred people are looking in through the curtain, applauding.”
“Oh. When is the show?”
“When is not the question. Where is the question. New York. I’m going at the end of summer. The show opens in October, and after that I’m going to do another one in Paris. It was Mr. Lion-Maned Poet who set up the show in Paris, to tell you the truth. André. I should try to be nicer to him. Anyway.” She seemed out of breath.
“Are you all right?”
“A little afraid, I guess. I’m leaving Diego for a long time. Leaving everybody, but in a different sense, leaving Diego.”
“I don’t believe that. You and that frog can’t breathe without each other.”
“Well, we’ll see. Anyway, I wanted to repair some damages, before I go.”
She lay back and closed her eyes. After a minute she asked, “How do you know it was my birthday, the day we met in the Melchor market?”
“Because it was mine too.”
She sat up and her eyes opened wide, like a doll. “We have the same birthday?”
“Yes.”
“All this time?”
“Every year, in fact.”
She stared, recalculating history. “All those parties and birthday fiestas. You’ve been working like a slave on your own cumpleaños.”
So after all, she cannot divine everything.
She lay back again and closed her eyes. “Mi vida, don’t keep secrets from me. You shouldn’t even try, you see how we’re connected? It will always be the case. We came into life through the same passage.”