Free The Rhythm of Memory by Alyson Richman

talent for such things.”
    The next week, Octavio met Juan Francisco at one of the major film studios in Santiago. Amid the chaos of the set, he was ushered to an area where three girls were waiting with scripts in hand.
    “First, we’ll put some makeup on you and take some shots of you alone. Then we’ll have you read with some of the girls,” Juan Francisco informed him while making small gestures with his hand. As he smiled at Octavio, the brim of his straw hat cast shadows over his already dark complexion.
    “Don’t forget to read slowly and to make the best of those eyes of yours!” he whispered to his young protégé as Octavio made his way into the makeup chair.
    Octavio nodded. He was nervous. His stomach was in knots. If it wasn’t for the pressure of having to prove himself to Don Fernando and Doña Olivia, he would never have gotten his nerve up to go through with it.
    Luckily, Salomé had practiced with him in the days leading up to his audition. They had taken a copy of Cyrano de Bergerac out of the library and he had rehearsed the lines until they came to him.
    “You’re a natural at this!” Salomé said in between her girlish giggles. “Who would have known that you had such talent! It’s a shame you wrote me those poems and didn’t recite them aloud!”
    “I will recite them aloud for you anytime you wish, my darling.”
    She smiled up at him, her complexion radiant from her pregnancy and her unflappable affection for him.
    “When I see the camera, I will pretend it is your face,” he said poetically. “I will gaze into the lens and pretend it is your eyes I see, your mouth trembling for a kiss, and then I will never suffer from stage fright.”
    He went over to her and knelt by her side. She ran her fingers through his thick black curls and whispered her unyielding love for him into his small velvet ears.
    Now, nearly seven days later, Octavio stood in front of the camera. He held his script between his trembling hands and saw the monstrous camera being wheeled in his direction.
    “Start from paragraph one!” the director shouted out to him.
    Octavio began tentatively. Yet, somehow even before he uttered his second stanza of lines, his nervousness vanished. His limbs stopped shaking. It was as if he were in the garden alone with his beloved Salomé.
    His voice became strong and his lips formed each word perfectly. His eyes were sincere, and through the camera’s lens, the planes of his face seemed to both reflect and radiate light. He appeared sensual, lithe, and full of grace. Gestures came to him without his thinking, as if he were moved by a spirit not his own. The character of the lovesick hero seemed made for him. His eyes captured the depth and despair for which the director had been searching, but had yet to find.
    Octavio mesmerized the entire set. When the director yelled “Cut,” every person on the soundstage remained quiet.
    The rest was history. From that moment on, Octavio Ribeiro was billed as Chile’s Cary Grant. The nation’s new leading man. Their next rising star.
    The young man who had once stood alone in the orange grove waiting for his love to join him, now stood alone on a movie set with an airbrushed sunset in the background. Microphones dangled from the ceiling and a camera zoomed in on his expressive face, as Octavio recited the lines he had memorized only minutes before.

Eleven

S ANTIAGO , C HILE
    M ARCH 1966
    Two weeks after he signed his first contract with the studio, Octavio and Salomé married in a small ceremony in the chapel of her grandfather’s hacienda. Salomé wore a high-waisted gown with a square neckline, a lace mantilla cascading down her shoulders, a garland of lemon blossoms in her dark, black hair.
    Before they were wed, they exchanged gifts. He had given her a book filled with the pictures of the Fayum, the ancient Egyptians who painted their eyes with thick, black lines of kohl. He had nicknamed her “my Fayum” because of her long