"Last night I drove a car
not knowing how to drive
not owning a car
I drove and knocked down
people I loved
...went 120 through one town.
I stopped at Hedgeville
and slept in the back seat
...excited about my new life."
Last Night I Drove a Car
Gregory Corso
Journal of Edward Masen
October 25, 1954
I hope that I have run far enough away from New York, from Isabella. I am saddened to leave my family in the dark as to my whereabouts but I cannot risk them continuing to push us together. I have no idea what possessed Isabella to offer herself to me that night but I barely had the strength to resist what would have surely meant her death. If I had been intimate with her I've no doubt it would have been both sublime and tragic.
I grasped the iron posts of my bed, crushing them, for an hour until I was sure that she was far enough away that I could resist following and consuming her. Then I ran from the apartment myself and set out on foot south, not stopping until I got to the hills of North Carolina and could follow the shelter of the woods. I stopped in at a bank in Raleigh to get money from one of our many accounts and I bought a car and a change of clothing. I travelled south relentlessly, driving through Mexico, Guatemala, continuing south through terrible roads and stinking towns.
I didn't stop until I got to the town of La Plata, outside of Buenos Ares. Why here? I was tired and this was finally far enough that it would take me a significant effort to get back, enough effort that I couldn't do it as an impulse. Plus the Ford I bought used in Raleigh stopped working. The mechanics in town assure me that they can get it working as soon as the parts arrive. When that will be they don't know. Maybe I should drive the car into the sea to slow myself down.
November 11, 1954
Journal of Edward Masen
I have attracted an unlikely human acquaintance here in La Plata. His name is Salvador Garcia-Lopez and he is a 35 year-old artist. He was educated in Madrid and was becoming a sought after painter in the art circles of Europe when he made the decision to return to his childhood home in here. He doesn't know that I know any of this, of course. I gathered my intelligence from his mind and from the gossip in the minds of the local townspeople. They are simultaneously proud and appalled by his decision to forgo fame and fortune in Europe for life as a teacher in a rural town.
At least they know who he is. They are convinced that I am a former Nazi; Argentina is dirty with hidden war criminals. It's ironic that the truth about me is so much worse.
They take my money. I buy food I don't need and contribute richly to the local economy, making a careful effort to spread the money around evenly. I even hired a gardener and a cleaning lady I don't need. I pay what they ask, even though I know they overcharge me because they hate me and because they can.
Senor Garcia-Lopez, Salvador, he begs me to call him is the only one who knows that I am not a Nazi. He knew Germans on the continent and knows that I am not one. He believes me that I am a rich American; he is convinced that I am fleeing a love affair gone wrong. He is right in so many ways but I gather he thinks that the object of my affection is dead rather than the other way around.
Salvador is my landlord. I am living in the manor his grandfather built. I rented the home through his agent, however and didn't meet him until he sought me out. He approached me outside the town's only seller of pens and paper. I had paused on the porch to allow some village women pass by so they did not have to breathe the same air as me, an effort I was sure that they would appreciate. He spoke to me then.
"It could be worse. If they liked you they would be throwing their daughters at you. Maybe literally." He laughed and I over-rode my natural instinct to avoid human interaction and smiled at him. I had been alone for a month.
"Don't worry, your secret is safe with me. If anyone asks me you are the most hideous of war criminals."
"How do you know I'm not?" I knew the answer but was prolonging the interaction.
"I am an artist. I notice things. You're an American and too willing to accept their hatred to be anything but a tortured young man. Your Spanish is very good, though. Where did you learn?"
"Mexico City," I lied. We introduced ourselves and I parted company with him before I got too comfortable with the novelty of speaking with another person. I couldn't afford and didn't deserve the friendship of
this man.
I couldn't escape him, however. Within a few days he came by my house with a book he had ordered that he thought I might like. He was lonely, too. He had left behind friends in Europe and missed talking about books and music with them. I decided a limited amount of contact would be permissible and perhaps safe.
Salvador has gotten into the habit of coming by my place once or twice a week, and inviting me to his. I refuse his invitations for dinner, saying that I have a "specialized" diet from a Brazilian clinic. He will have a glass of wine and we will sit on my porch or his, watching the moon, the stars, the local flora and fauna. From his porch we can see the town's plaza and Salvador tells me stories about the inhabitants of the town and about his childhood there. I know who was secretly in love with another's wife, what families had silent, unspoken feuds over events that occurred many decades ago. Sometimes Salvador paints.
December 30th, 1954
I do my best to let the sleepy pace of the town and Salvador's lyrical stories consume my thoughts. But she is seldom far away. I wonder what Isabella is doing now. I wonder if she still stays with my family or whether she has returned to her life on the streets. Alice indicated that it was important that Carlisle save her life, take her in but she would not specify why. I cannot allow myself to contact them, although I know my family will be worried. I cannot allow any chance that I might go back there.
It took two months for Salvador to ask me about my tragic romance. He is unusually intuitive for a human, a trait I attribute to being an artist.
"Tell me about her, my friend." He interrupts at least an hour of comfortable silence between us. Salvador is staring into the forest with a pencil in his hand and a piece of drawing paper before him and I am writing in my journal.
"Who?' I ask, pretending.
"The woman, the reason you face north when you aren't aware of it." He looks at me with a gentle smile. I stare at him for a moment.
"I can't. Please forgive me. I don't intend to be secretive." I let my voice fade out, hoping he will drop the subject with his usual courtesy.
"I am an artist," he laughs. "I just want to know what she looks like."
"She…she looked like the moon. She had dark hair and dark eyes and skin like milk." I wince; it's painful to think of her, like a razor slipping through my dead heart. "She was beautiful." It occurs to me that I am talking about her in the past tense. I suspect I am afraid that if Salvador knew she was alive he would urge me to go back. He is a romantic and a fool. I am afraid that I would.
I go on longer, detailing her slight form, the abyss of her dark brown eyes and the faint blush I saw on her cheeks that last night. Was it shame or anger?
I get up to end the conversation, not realizing that while I spoke, as if in a trance, I drew her perfect face in my journal. Thankfully, I have drawn her looking away in the distance. I couldn't bear to have her eyes looking at me.
March 18, 1955
I have left Argentina. Even as I write I am on a plane scheduled to stop in Havana where I will catch another flight to whatever northern city I can to get back to New York. I am going back to her.
I had no intention of doing so eight hours ago. I was sitting alone on my shaded porch looking out on the pampas and contemplating buying a piano for my rented home when I decided to go ask my friend Salvador for permission. It would, after all, have to remain here after I left so it was important to have my landlord's permission.
I put on a long-sleeved shirt and a straw hat to hide my skin from the sun and hastily walked the fifty feet to Salvador's home. His maid let me in telling me to go straight through to the studio, that Salvador was working. She tried to hide her repulsion of me but I could see it in her head. I wondered if she would hate me more or less if she knew that I was not a Nazi but a vampire?
I walked through to Salvador's messy, light studio, observing with relief that the windows were placed as such that there was no direct sunlight in the room. Salvador was not there but I imagined he would return soon so I stood there looking at a few of the canvases that he had on easels.
Salvador clearly worked on a few paintings at a time, going from one to the other as his mood suited him. I had only been in here once before, when he brought me in here to see a painting he had completed of the view from my back porch when he was fourteen. I began to walk the circuit of easels in the room when I was startled to see a portrait of myself.
Salvador's style was somewhat modernist without being abstract so I could clearly identify myself in the painting; I recognized my distinct hair color and it's perpetual disarray, my amber eyes and pale skin. What Salvador portrayed that surprised me was a haunted hungriness in my gaze. In his portrait I was looking in the distance but not as if thinking or gazing but searching desperately for something. I recognized it as the truth but was surprised to see that he could see it and paint it so accurately.
Uneasy, I finally tore myself away from the portrait to look at the next one. I had been startled to see myself on the previous canvas; I was devastated and shaken to see the next portrait was Isabella.
I froze in front of her portrait, seized by fury and jealousy. How could he have painted her so accurately? How had he seen her? I realized I was being irrational and tried to calm my fury but seeing her face for the first time in months lit something in me I had never felt. I gripped the portrait by its edges, almost crushing it, catching myself as I saw the canvas distort from my force. I loosened my grip but continued to lock my eyes on it.
That was how Salvador found me. He knew immediately what I had found but no doubt was startled by the look he saw on my face.
"Edward, I hope I have not offended you. I was so captivated by your words about her that I could not help but…" His words trailed off as I turned to him, the painting still gripped in my hands. "How?" I asked. "How did you paint her so accurately?" He smiled proudly at me.
"I looked at your sketch in your journal and listened to your words. I have her right? I wasn't sure about the eyes, exactly."
I looked back to the portrait. Her eyes were lighter that Isabella's but what was most telling about the fact that the artist had never met her was the expression. The Isabella of Salvador's portrait gazed out at me lovingly, warmly. She had never looked at me that way. She had looked at me with scorn, indifference and finally seductive intent and shock, but never with love.
"You have done remarkably." I looked back at him with a thin smile. I wasn't upset with him, what he had done was not intended to offend me or violate my privacy. He was an artist, he felt compelled to bring my words to life. He intended to return my lost love to me.
When I heard his thoughts I was seized by the overwhelming compulsion to go back, to find her. I reeled at the injustice, the perversity of the idea that this man thought my sweetheart dead when, in fact, I had abandoned Isabella alive in my parent's apartment where she might still be. I had to return. I fought against it with my rational brain but I knew then that I had to go back and try to find her.
I don't know what Salvador saw on my face but he knew that something had changed when I saw the portrait. He stood there watching me. Finally, I was able to turn back to him.
"Salvador, you have been a very good friend and an excellent landlord."
"Are you leaving? I apologize for my intrusion. It was unforgivable of me. Please do not leave because of me…"
"I am leaving because of you but it is because you have…reminded me of what I left behind." I gestured to the portrait of Isabella. I saw the shock and a hint of anger on Salvador's face as he realized what I was saying.
"You mean she…you left her? All this time you let me think she was dead and you sat here mourning a woman who is still alive? What is wrong with you?" I couldn't help but laugh at his fury, which made him even angrier.
"I'm sorry." I held out my hands to him and made my face somber. "I…am not good for her, I didn't want to hurt her. I can't explain more than that, I thought I needed to leave."
"You are going back, correct?" He looked less angry but confused nonetheless. I nodded. "Good, because I do not rent to Nazis or idiotic young men. You will go pack your things and I will arrange for a car to take you to the airport in Buenos Aires."
"Thank you." I looked him in the eye. "I know that your work fetches a large price. Please allow me to buy these two paintings. You must name the price."
"I will send them to you when I finish them. They will cost you an immediate trip back to the states to fix your idiocy." Salvador shook his head at me and walked back into the house. I looked at the painting of her one last time and left to pack my things.
a/n: Thank you to EverlastingMuse for fixing my boo boos and Liz3615 for holding my hand and telling me everything is going to be ok.