"No!" I said. "You didn't."
"I did. You've got yourself a genuine Aaron-hair brush."
"That's just plain creepy."
He shrugged. "It just means there'll be a little bit of me in everything you draw."
I looked at the brush again, deciding it wasn't as creepy as it was sweet. Then I realized something was missing. "Is there any paper?"
He smiled and gestured toward the empty white walls of the cottage. "Who needs paper?"
I think that was the moment my feelings toward Aaron took a quantum leap beyond gratitude, respect, and awe.
14
The seven mysteries
I once saw this documentary about a family who had adopted a young chimpanzee. They raised it as part of the family. It ate at the table, had its own room done up like any other kid's room. The little chimp had all the love it could handle, and yet there was a deep sadness in its eyes. It knows there's something wrong, I remember thinking. It knows it can never be like the tall, slender creatures around it. I wondered if he was human in his dreams, only to wake up to realize it was never going to happen.
That's how I felt among the beautiful people of De León, and no matter how accepted they made me feel, I knew I would never be like them. I wondered how long it would take for them to realize it and send me on my way.
I had been in paradise for three weeks when Abuelo paid a surprise visit to my cottage. What had begun as a bare room was now decorated with furniture, quilts, and other warm touches brought by the residents of De León. Everything, of course, but mirrors.
I was doing my ink drawings―I had already filled up two whole walls and was working on a third. I stiffened when I saw Abuelo at my open front door. Abuelo never came to visit you― you always went to see him. I looked at the ink drawings on the wall and felt as if I had been caught doing something wrong.
"Hola, mi hija," he said as he stepped in. "I came to see how you are getting on."
"I'm good," I squeaked out. Abuelo never did anything without purpose. I was convinced that this was the day he would cast me out. After all, I had yet to make myself useful here. Was my free ride over? My heart began to beat like I was running a marathon, but I tried not to let it show.
He took a look at the walls, taking them in, saying nothing, then stepped back from the fullest wall to see it as a whole. "It looks like . . . writing," he said.
"It is . . . kind of," I explained. "I use the basic strokes of Chinese writing for all my drawing." I picked up my brush and on a blank spot of wall showed him the seven simple marks I had taught myself years ago.
"The Chinese call these strokes the Seven Mysteries," I told him.
Abuelo studied the seven marks, then stepped closer to examine the individual drawings, each one no larger than a sheet of paper, since that was the size I was used to. I waited for him to turn to me, offer his apologies, and tell me I had to leave De León. But he didn't. Instead he pointed to three of the drawings. "This one is the view from your porch," he said. "This, I think, is Harmony's garden. And this ... this is me!" He smiled broadly. "Que bueno!"
I can't tell you how relieved I was by his approval. A man who smiled like that wasn't about to hurl you back over the mountains. "You got all three right!" I said. Even though the drawings were stylized, and simplified with the barest gestures of lines, he had figured them out.
Then he turned to the one wall I hadn't gotten to yet―still stark white, without a single brushstroke. He pointed to it. "Leave this wall blank," he said. Then he nodded to me, said adios, and left without another word.
As relieved as I was that he hadn't expelled me from De León, I was also confused.
Leave this wall blank.
It was a mystery. The seventh mystery, I thought, and glanced at the individual drying brush marks on the wall. Even more than keeping track of the days, I was keeping track of the many strange things that didn't sit right with me about De León. I was supposed to "find the answers" here, but for a place that was supposed to hold all my answers, the people of De León didn't care much for my questions. Oh, sure, they were polite when I asked, but through the pleasant talk, there was a silent air of secrecy―like they all had a malformed child locked away in the attic―which was impossible, because of mystery number one: There were no children in De León.
Aaron had become uncomfortable when I asked him about it during my first days there.
"The women here don't seem to be able to have babies," he told me. "I think it's something in the water."
"That's awful."
Aaron shrugged. "They don't mind. Or at least they don't anymore."
It bothered me, but not as much as it might have, since I didn't plan on inflicting my genes on a defenseless, unsuspecting future―but how could such a thing not bother all the other women here? I asked Aaron more questions about it, but he just changed the subject.
It wasn't just him. Everyone I spoke to had the same kind of response to my questions. It was like all of their information was sifted through a strainer, to remove anything juicy before it got to me.
Mystery number two: "To Serve Abuelo."
I learned about this particular mystery while weaving with Harmony and a few of the other women, when I questioned them about the isolation of the town.
"If nothing comes in or out," I asked Harmony, "how did Abuelo send me his letter?"
The women in the room, who had seemed so happy with their weaving and their humming, now looked at one another apprehensively.
"The monastery," said one of the other women. She was immediately shushed, and the silence that fell made the birds outside seem loud.
I looked to each of them, but none would return my gaze. "Monastery?" Hadn't Abuelo once mentioned something about monks?
Harmony sighed. "We're not entirely self-sufficient," she said. "Our valley is small. We don't have land to raise our crops, or to raise livestock. So Abuelo struck a bargain a very long time ago with the Vladimirian monks."
I thought of the various kinds of monks I knew about. Buddhist. Franciscan. Benedictine.
"I never heard of the Vladimirian monks," I told them.
"And you never will hear of them again," a woman named Gertrude said. "They exist to keep us secret. To bring us the food we cannot grow, and to take messages to the outside world when we need it."
"And what do they get out of it?"
"The joy of serving Abuelo," Gertrude said.
"And," said Harmony, "that's all there is to know about that." Then she launched into a song, and the other women joined in. Although I had a ton more questions, it was clear there were no more answers in this sewing circle.
Mystery number three: "Go with the Flow."
I stumbled upon this one while visiting with Claude and Willem, the two men who made furniture. I enjoyed watching them work, and I loved the smell of the fresh wood―but I had a better reason for hanging around them. Unlike many of the others, they got careless with their talk―especially once they grew more comfortable with me.
"How long have you lived here?" I once asked them as they worked together on a table.
"Not all that long," the tall one named Willem said. "Our little group is nomadic by nature."
"Nomadic?" I said. "It seems to me you've been here for a long time."
"Long is a relative word," said Claude, with a distinctly French accent. "We were in Lourdes before this. And before that Tibet― a valley in the Himalayas, not much different than this, although even less accessible."