My grandfather had a saying, “I will die a bitter man.”
And he did. He owned the largest salt mine in Spain, you see. My father, who would smile when he told us stories about salt, fretted about our futures.
“Mine was white,” he said.
He said he wanted us to know color. “Explore it,” he said. “Fabricate it. Invent new ones. Eat prisms. Give them as gifts. I want to see your hands covered in oils. Take the color white and make it squeal like a hungry infant.”
I had no idea what he meant. But Ezmarelda said she did. She flew with me back to the States. She told me: he means gardens; he means a row of different-flavored ice cream vats open to show their tones, if you can construct that image; he means for you to study the nuances; his evocation of the prism is a metaphor.
In the City, we visited Leslie, whose ex-husband had filmed their relationship surreptitiously. He’d drilled a hole in the bedroom ceiling; one day he showed her, openly displaying their numerous adventures in bed.
“At first I was thrilled,” Leslie sad, “then the thought of him installing the camera made me sick.”
How she’d rid herself of him is unmentionable, except for one time when he made vows, promises, opened his hands to her in the posture of a plea while on his knees. “He said that it would never happen again. This was months after. I remember him on his knees in the bedroom, his mouth dripping with unbelievable words, the dog. You won’t believe what I found in his bag when we got back together.”
“How could you have let him back in?” I asked. “After such treatment.”
“Love,” Leslie said. “Such a foolish thing.”
Her story gave Ezmarelda the material required to augment my lack of imagination.
I wrote a script. She read it and said: “It’s good, but take out the words needle, portcullis, Nedermeyer, babble, disadvantage, vulva, pleasant, insertion, dust, fire under the sheets, and use the words bastard, this time, and sweet talk instead.”
I made the changes without question. But the important part came when we arranged the space that Leslie had agreed to for she was an actor and had agreed to relive her torment out of curiosity.
“This horrible scene is your chance,” Ezmarelda told me. “It’s your chance. We will make the space glow with color. The pillow, the sheets, the skin, the hair, the salt-colored ceiling. They will all glow against the circles of her eyes, which will show regret, sadness, and shame. Some people will hear the words, others will be transported by the colors. And then, I believe, you should understand better your father’s relationship to salt.”
I shuddered with excitement. “But what shall we call it?” I asked, unable to think clearly.
“Hole,” she said. “Such a strange word. An obvious word. Torturous.”
