Welcome to Partachute.
(For a brief history of our journal please read here.)
Four years after our first publications in 2009, the structure of the journal is changing. From now on, Partachute will not come out in issues including many works, but rather one or two will be on the focus each time, giving us also the opportunity to publish more frequently the material we select.
In the home page is featured the latest work we host, while on the top menu, at ‘Works’, you can find the total of creations we have published in reverse chronological order. For convenience, we decided to place them also on the menu to the left, though bearing in mind that not all the works we host necessarily fit into one category or genre only. Finally, from the top menu, ‘Writers & Contributors’, you can be directed to the list of names and biographical notes of all those whose work has found home in our pages.
Happy reading,
Partachutists, April 2012
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5 April 2012
All that Remains is Earth - short story by Miranda Floy
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I came home today to find Federico Ortega sitting at my kitchen table. In the dim light of a wintry afternoon he filled my flat like a vast and brooding bear. I knew him by his jacket, bleached across his shoulders by a hard relentless sun; I recognised his brightly coloured sash and the great rowelled spurs jutting from his boots, and his hat, which sat upon my table like a cracked leather cat. Between us, a landscape in umber dust had gathered on the lino. The air smelled of horses, of tall grass and tallow sacks, night sky and longing, but it also reeked of regret. Federico Ortega was not as I have imagined him. His broad shoulders were stooped with age, his thick hair now meagre strands of grey, and lines like rocky ravines traversed his once-beautiful face. I shuddered to see him so diminished, but then his eyes rested on mine and I felt a cold thrill.
You have never heard of Federico Ortega. If you had, he would not have appeared so rudely in my kitchen, one hand on a faded notebook stolen from the back of my wardrobe, the other on the silver-inlaid pistol resting on the table beside it.
There are three things you should know about Federico Ortega: one, his skill as a horseman is such he has a reputation for lassoing grizzlies; two, he has loved just one woman, passionately, every day of his life; and three, I am the reason he has never actually met her.
Yesterday was my eighty-seventh birthday and today this devilish caballero waited in my tiny retirement flat, with the barrel of a six-gun and a lifetime’s foetid resentment trained in my direction. But, regardless of the frantic bird snared within my chest, I did not suffer a heart attack or even a mild stroke, I set my shopping trolley down on the hall carpet, drew a handkerchief from my sleeve and dabbed the trails of saliva gathered in the creases of my chin. Ravaged by time he may be, but Federico Ortega was still a handsome man and I was still a woman.
‘Where is she?’
His voice, low and powerful, rattled me like the shock of a passing train. I opened my mouth to speak, but the words, aware they had no choice but to break his heart or lie, refused to come. Federico watched with ill-concealed disgust as I struggled to unzip my coat. I cursed the idiot girl who came this morning and picked out the same clothes as yesterday, a drab ill-fitting cardigan and a skirt she could see had tea on it. One knee absurdly trembling, I lowered myself into a chair and faced him across the table.
‘Where is she?’ he growled again, brandishing the notebook.
I found myself confronted with the picture of Aleida, an implausibly pretty girl with a bunch of lace at her neck and a wilful look in her eye. An ancient sprig of jasmine fluttered from the loosening pages and I remembered sitting in that garden – Godstone or Farley Green? – more than sixty years ago, twirling those delicate flowers between my fingers, basking in their too exquisite scent and meaning, truly believing I would grant this creature life.
To my horror, he began to read aloud: ‘“Aleida Cohn had eyes the colour of desert sage and hair of ebony silk the colour of El Morro’s mane. Her beauty drew Federico across the valley, like the scent of a freshly killed bull drew the cattle into his reata.”’
I considered pulling the cord, but what would I say when the warden came knocking? That a ghost – no, not even a ghost, an illusion, figment of my imagination – had come to torture me with long-forgotten dreams? I turned again to this foul beast and willed it to be gone, but the thoughts I had concealed all those years continued to pour from his mouth like the torrent from a grinning gargoyle. The pages devoted to himself he ignored, he was interested in one thing alone; his arrival at The Silent Pool, the moment Federico and Aleida first met, the page where the writing stopped.
Words trailing in the air like smoke, he turned to me and snarled, ‘It was you. You were the one who led me to that place between the rocks, to see her bathe in the green-brown water. But it was she who let me watch. It was Aleida who knew I was there and smiled. I stepped out from beneath the tree... but then there is a veil before my eyes, it’s like a shadow falling!’
A sudden gust lashed at the walls and for an awful moment the vision of Aleida, vengeful waif at my window, hovered outside in the gloom. But I knew Federico had come alone.
‘Tell me where it ends, how it began,’ he howled in desperation. ‘Why did you abandon us?’
I looked at his noble jaw and velvet eyes, marred by jowl and rheum. ‘Tell me first why you’ve grown so old, I never pictured you like this.’
‘You imagined I could wait forever, unchanged?’ he roared. ‘I am as old as these pages!’
I reached out and took the notebook from him, laying its yellow words to rest upon the table. ‘It was an idea born in youth. I put such things away when I met my husband.’
‘You were married.’ Not a question, but an accusation. ‘Yet you denied me my happiness.’
‘Marriage doesn’t always mean happiness.’ If I was to be on trial, I may as well tell the truth. ‘My husband and I married late. We had a daughter, but motherhood didn’t suit me. I wanted more from life. I became bitter, bound up in my own disappointment. I had settled for something less than I’d hoped for. I hated him for that.’
‘But you were the one to blame.’
‘Yes.’
Federico furrowed his brow, his thumb traced the pattern of engravings that swirled the length of his gun; a gift on the day of his wedding, though he would never know it. This much had I written in the margins, every inch of him carved in ink, while the bride remained a sketch. ‘Tell me about Aleida. All I have is a smile.’
‘And the call of a white-winged dove.’
He looked up in surprise.
‘Jewels of sunlight moving on her skin; the scent of nightshade heavy on the air.’
‘Yes!’
‘I stood beside you on that bank. I was there in the water.’
Federico scowled and leant back in his chair. He rested his powerful hands on the carved horn buckle of his belt. ‘Tell me.’
‘She was a wild, unbiddable creature,’ I sighed. ‘Her father was a wealthy Jew. Newly married, he fled Europe with his delicate bride, in hope of a better life, in that land on the edge of the Earth. But three days after Aleida entered the world, he saw his wife die in his arms.’
Federico looked stricken. ‘I remember her father. The matanza I was in charge of was on his land. He was a good man.’
‘Now he was stranded in the wilderness, lost in grief, with a motherless infant. When the Indians came to his door, he stood, impotent as one explained, “Here you have nothing, if the child stays with you she will die. Among us are many new mothers, if the child comes with us she will live. In two moons we will return, to show you all is well.” What else could the poor man do, but hand over that precious bundle? The weeks passed in sorrow and mourning, the loss of both his loves too much to bear. But two months later, true to their word, the tribesmen came back to his door, with Aleida thriving in their number. So, powerless to argue, he watched them ride off again, until finally his daughter was returned, the white settler child suckled on red native milk.’
At this, Federico’s eyes widened, ‘My mother was a Mission Indian!’
‘I know.’ I longed to touch him.
‘And my father came from a great house, rancheros of noble descent.’
My face, I suppose, betrayed me.
Federico slammed his fist on the table. ‘The Ortegas were brave people!’
I nodded feebly.
‘God damn you, tell me the truth!’
‘I read an article once in a newspaper, about a legendary vaquero, a descendant of Francisco de Ortega, the man who led the first Spanish settlers into California.’ I shifted beneath his gaze. ‘I based you on that man, but I never replaced his name.’
Federico thrust his chair from the table, his face twisted in anger. ‘So this is all that I am?’ He towered above me, pulsing with rage. ‘The shadow of some other man?’
‘No, not all!’ I rose to face him, the bird once more battling its cage. ‘You were everything to me. I thought of you every day.’
‘Then why did you forsake me?’
‘Because I was afraid!’
‘Of what?’
‘I was afraid it wouldn’t work. And then I would lose you forever!’
‘And for this you kept me from Aleida?’
‘She never existed!’ The words leapt without thinking. ‘She was just the girl I wanted to be. A better, more beautiful version of myself.’
Federico staggered backwards. A look of anguish bled through his fury. ‘That’s a lie! What have you done with her?’
‘When my husband died, I tried to finish it. But that girl was no longer there. That’s when I put you away forever.’
‘No!’ he thundered. ‘If I exist, so does Aleida!’
We stood with the dusk enfolding us, each daring the other to move. The wind shrieked and the walls held their breath. The clock in the hallway chimed the hour. Federico went for his gun, but recoiled again in confusion. The pistol was no longer there. It had vanished, the way details steal from a dream. Was I not the mistress of these ceremonies? He raised his hand to strike me. I closed my eyes, waited, and willed a gentle caress. Slowly I felt him lower his hand, then move away without touching me. Exhausted, I sank into a chair.
Federico went to the window and stared into the gathering darkness. ‘You know I belong to you,’ he shook his head sadly. ‘I can never be parted from you.’ He came and knelt before me, and peered into my eyes. ‘I don’t understand,’ he murmured, ‘I thought I would find her here.’
His face was close to mine. I knew I would never have the opportunity again, so I reached out and touched his cheek, cupping it in the palm of my hand. But like all handsome men, Federico knew his own worth, and though he tried to hide it, I saw him shudder. I thought then of my husband, of what a gentleman he was, and I remembered how he always adored me, though he got nothing for it in return. How could I blame Federico? Hadn’t I made him, to love one girl his whole life? What a sordid spectacle I must be to him – this mother-god creator, deity incarnate – a fat old woman in Velcro shoes, her body massed at the waist and ankle in painful, swollen rings. I removed the offending hand and straightened myself in my chair.
‘Why have you come, Federico?’
He glanced at the thin brown flowers, at the pages scattered on the table. ‘Tell me first how it ends. What happens to Federico and Aleida?’
I took a deep breath, to still the broken wings within my chest. ‘Do you really want to know?’
‘You owe me this at least.’
‘It takes a long time for her father to accept you, the newspapers are full of stories about atrocities in Cuba. He’s a passionate republican, a believer in Manifest Destiny, but he’s too old to sign up. So you go in his place. A Mestizo volunteer in an American war against Spain. You marry Aleida the day before you leave.’
‘I leave her, to go and fight in this war?’
‘Yes, but you never make it overseas. Your regiment remains in poor conditions at the Presidio. You contract yellow fever.’
If Federico was moved by this news he refused to show it. He uttered just one word: ‘Aleida?’
‘She runs mad with grief. Her father finds her wandering the bounds of the slaughter corral at night, drawn to that place of skulls where she saw you ride so many times. In the end he sails with her to England.’
We sat in silence for a long time, the wind no longer blowing.
‘I’m sorry Federico, perhaps it’s for the best I never finished it.’
He gazed with damp eyes at the portrait of Aleida. ‘No,’ he said simply. ‘But my ending would have been different.’
‘Do you think you can ever forgive me?’
‘It isn’t up to me.’
He was right about that. My judgement lay in the hands of another; the invisible critic to whom I have dictated my entire existence, consulted on every thought, the only one who ever shared my story.
It was dark outside when Federico turned to face me, ‘Do you have a picture of your husband? I’d like to see him.’
I heaved myself up and went out to the hallway, where a photograph stood neglected in dust. As I turned something fell before my eyes, like a veil, like a shadow. I waited for the thunder of drums which had started up in the distance to subside, and saw myself a fragile thing of ash, that at the slightest touch would shatter and dissolve, my lovely pattern lost forever, leaving nothing but a stain on the carpet. For a moment I was desperately afraid, then Federico was at my side, gently stroking my forehead. I could no longer see him, but he was singing a native song, a song that his mother – I – had taught him.
‘What does it mean?’ I whispered, though I remembered well enough.
‘All that remains is earth.’
I wanted to thank him; to ask again, was I forgiven? But I already knew the answer. I was no longer afraid. I drew my last jagged breath and smiled. Tomorrow morning my daughter will let herself in to find me dead in the hallway, a photograph of her father in my hand and a notebook full of words on my table. But if you had been there, you would have seen a young man dive into green-brown water, and swim to meet his companion in the widening pool of my eye.
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Note: the story was published for the first time in the anthology with the title ‘The Draft’, Ball Bearing Press, 2011.
