20
In this story, thought Tancredo as he entered the tower, there are too many loose ends, too many orphan narratives: Burgos’s pilgrimage north, the stutterer’s enigmatic disappearance, the arbitrary doodles of Wallenda, the incomplete story of Esquilín’s discoveries. Then he corrected himself: all stories were necessarily incomplete, any story was covered by secrets in the end.
He’d gone to the tower to say goodbye. He spent the early-afternoon hours in Gaspar’s barbershop, and when it came time to leave, he announced that he wouldn’t be back. Then he walked to La Esperanza, ordered a coffee with milk, and started to read. He spent half an hour reading a book about marine algae and then, when exhaustion started to weasel in, he asked for the set of dominoes. He played for half an hour, and only then, when he saw that nothing new was happening, no revelation was appearing, he told the two boys of his departure. Ten minutes later, carrying a photograph of Cano, the old salsa singer, he looked at the tower and thought about going in one last time, but an unexpected sight held him back. On the stairs that led to the tower’s entrance, he recognized María José Pinillos. She was dressed as a clown; it seemed that alcohol had finally won out. He handed her ten dollars, and thought again about the man who spent his days at the beach with a metal detector, looking for lost treasure.
* * *
In one of the defendant’s notebooks, Esquilín found a paragraph that struck him as pertinent to the situation. There, among eschatological reflections, the defendant mentioned an anecdote that the lawyer thought was strangely illuminating, even though precisely what interested him was its lack of conclusion.
In the year 1646, a Jew by the name of Sabbatai Zevi, born in the city of İzmir, proclaimed himself the Messiah and prophesied that the end of days would come two years later, in 1648. The year came; the end didn’t. The strange thing about the story was, instead of outing him as a mere impostor, it was precisely his failure that made him famous. From then on, he was seen in public plazas, showered in honors, proclaiming himself the Messiah—unable, though, to predict the true end. A man living after the end of times, thought the lawyer.
* * *
How, then, to conclude? Perhaps, thought Tancredo, it was best to confine oneself to the pleasure of objective, brief facts. On September 17, after four hours of deliberation, Virginia McCallister, also known as Viviana Luxembourg, was sentenced to twenty years in prison, pending any new charges. The defendant didn’t cry when she heard the sentence.
Letter to Luis Gerardo Esquilín, Esquire
(Viviana Luxembourg / Virginia McCallister, January 24, 2012)
Today, out my tiny window, I saw a flock of birds cut through the faultless blue of the sky, and in their inaccessible shapes I thought I saw an image of my own freedom. There were so many of them, all identical in their anonymous jet black, and for a second I thought I saw a possible escape in their aerial games. Then I remembered those years I spent in front of the camera lenses, those days when they all looked at me and I was an image that everyone but me could see. For just an instant, I again felt that strange sensation of being pure image. I can’t lie. I must admit that sometimes I liked the freedom of being surface without essence. But then, in the gaps of silence that yawned between the moments of filming, I understood that they—the men, the cameras, the screen—they all thought they possessed me. They believed their rectangles held me prisoner. It was a sad realization. But today I saw the flock of birds break the tedium of the blue afternoon and I laughed, thinking how those people didn’t know I never felt as free as in the moments when, though only for a second, I managed to become pure image, just a mask, a being capable of constantly shifting form, changing personalities like names. And then, when I heard the sound of the now-distant birds, when I heard their warble reaching me from somewhere else, someplace outside my field of vision that belonged to fantasy and desire, I thought of Yoav. I remembered the photographs Yoav took of me as a teenager—Yoav, who in a way had been the only one to really see me, the only one who saw me beyond the frame of the photos printed in the magazines—and I couldn’t help but remember the picture he took of me that day in the middle of the jungle. I saw him as he pressed the shutter and I recognized what I felt that afternoon: the sad sensation that his eyes, too, held something of prison and punishment. I imagined him months later, developing those photographs where he would ultimately see me as everyone had seen me until then, within the rectangle of the photographic frame. And I told myself it didn’t matter, that I had to be brave. I had to return to the original intuition I’d had when I was young, when, in front of the cameras that tried to imprison me, I’d understood that any photograph was a mere copy, a copy of a copy, and that I, like that image, was free to run and to reproduce without any feeling of guilt. Free to reproduce the way frogs do in ponds, their tadpoles all identical and yet different. Free to be at the same time that woman whose face Yoav depicted, and to be, nevertheless, eternally another, the woman I had always wanted to be, the same one who now was returning to her ambition, and I understood that, though everyone thought it was foolish, my responsibility was to pursue the intuition that had brought me to the jungle, until I reached an end. I thought about things like that, until the sound of the birds was lost in the afternoon silence and there was nothing for me to do but sit down and write you this letter.
Part IV
The Southern March (1976)
There is no god and we are his prophets.
—Cormac McCarthy, The Road
1
For moments at a time, in the landscape’s populous calm, the only thing that can be heard is the camera as it flashes. For that instant, all that exists is him, the camera, and the impression that will be left to a future he can’t see, but on which he has bet it all. For that instant, nothing exists but him and his belief. Him and his future. Then, gradually, bringing him back to the jungle, the sonata of the roiling tropics filters in: the cacophony of birds, the fluttering of uncaged chickens, the snore of a tired native, the hiccup of some drunken Englishman. Still farther off, in a terribly singular and painful space, the sobs of the daughter whose cries he now hears again.
Only then does he take his eye from the camera and look at her.
Just ten years old, she has the heavy gaze of an insomniac and a terrible pallor that makes him think of Nordic latitudes he’s never seen. Beside the girl, a forcefully beautiful woman soothes her with a hand he knows well. With her other hand, his wife labors over a small, red leather notebook, the same one in which, ten days earlier, she wrote: “Day 1, The journey begins.” Only ten days and already the trip feels long, heavy, routine. Ten days have passed since a rusted-out bus left them on the threshold of what they dare to call a jungle, but that at times seems like nothing more than a giant garbage dump left behind by an absentee god.
* * *
He is distracted by the grunting rumble of a pig as it delves into the garbage. And then he takes in the full scene that surrounds him: the couple of drunken Brits to one side finishing off a bottle of gold rum; the atmosphere of lethargy and siesta over which a teeming nature looms, superimposed; the drugged-out German restaging his theatrical monologue for a laughing group of natives. The rest of the pilgrims sporadically dot the scene, resting under small tin roofs where the last drops of water drum a monotonous beat. And beyond, a man with tired eyes and unusual strength returns to his indecipherable prayer. Ten days have passed since this man, in his rough voice and unplaceable accent, promised them that by month’s end they would reach the young seer.
2
They call him the apostle. His arms are tattooed with symbols of war, and over a dozen plastic rosaries hang around his neck. His voice is hoarse, withdrawn. His speech is like a delusional monologue, a private and endless prayer to fill the empty hours. Gringo maldito, the natives call him behind his back: damned gringo. He refuses to say a word to them. Even so, five of them go everywhere with him. It’s rumored that he came in search of drugs and then found out he
could never go back. It’s rumored that he comes from a moneyed family, and that when he was young, he showed promise in the theater. It’s rumored that enlightenment came to him decades ago in the midst of the jungle, beside the immense tree he claims to be guiding them toward. They call him the apostle because that’s what he calls himself. They call him the apostle, but sometimes, the pilgrims have the feeling he’s nothing but a tour guide, a drugged Virgil for credulous gringos. Still, you only have to look again, or listen to him in his endless prayer, to know that he, at least, believes in everything he has promised. Now, three stinking pigs meander around him in the mud, while farther on, the natives play cards to ride out their boredom. They all wear American brand names and the ironic expressions of unbelievers. They all—natives and pilgrims alike—call him the apostle, because he promises things. Ten days ago, for example, he promised them that in one month’s time they will come to an enormous archipelago in the middle of the jungle, and that there, at the foot of a great fallen tree, the seer will show them the way. In his eyes, somewhere between belief and madness, the gamble of a generation is made manifest.
* * *
Ten days have passed since they started their journey on foot, five since the little girl started to get sick. The whole time, the jungle has done nothing but contradict their expectations. The naked natives wear T-shirts with rock band logos; in the place of exuberant nature, there are garbage dumps; instead of lawlessness, the state is omnipresent. Everywhere they go they encounter police, solemn border agents who fight their own boredom by assiduously checking travel documents. Far from the paradise they’d dreamed of, the jungle reveals its most modern face—its ruinous, border-town face.
Nevertheless, they well know that nature is there, latent like a sleeping scorpion. They sense it at night, in the utter darkness that envelops them. They hear it, rather than see it, in the whisper of nighttime animals; the fluttering fowl; the croak of the frogs, like nocturnal birds; the murmur of the insects always poised to wage war against the mosquito net. He, however, has been tasked specifically with making nature visible: as a photographer, he is to document the trip. That’s his place: halfway between participation and observation, between belief and irony. Only five years earlier, he earned his living taking photos of the most coveted models of New York. Today, he is following a man who has made an impossible promise. He is chasing after a drugged man’s invisible dream.
3
In the evenings, when the heat seems to be winning the battle, they sleep. On the third night, the mother dreams. She dreams she is in a house, safe and calm. Outside, the swish of leaves. Raindrops drum on the roof. She dreams that the storm outside slowly grows until it becomes omnipresent. Then she starts to feel afraid. Her family is a distant pull that makes her think she has to go out, into the yard that has become a dark forest full of owls and bears. In the house, in a corner, a man rather like the apostle cuts out newspaper articles to glue to a corkboard. A sound distracts her. A murmuring cry; her daughter is out there, in the storm. She steels herself and ventures toward the door that marks the threshold between inside and out. But there is no outside. There is no nature, only a great void where history loses its mind. And all is placid and terrible at the same time.
She wakes up crying.
Beside her, the sick little girl is sleeping, while from far away her husband asks her what’s wrong.
“I dreamed that nature didn’t exist.”
4
During the day they cross villages lost in the jungle, wrapped in the climbing vines of tedium, where the men watch them go by with utter indifference, their private form of contempt. They cross villages where the peace they all believed they’d find remains only as a ruin. By the third day, they understand that in these forgotten towns, monotony is the rule. Peace is a mother spending hours removing lice from the hair of a dozen sleepy children. They walk with the distinctive steps of seekers. The natives recognize them and, with a mocking gaze, let them pass.
They walk until afternoon finds them in a village where the drunks are jollier and the tedium ebbs away with the arrival of evening. In these villages, they are ushered in with greedy eyes. Then the hustle begins. A policeman gets up from his drunken stupor and asks for their papers. Still, they never bother the apostle. Even in these villages, the apostle seems to radiate an aura that makes him untouchable. They all present their documents, and then he, sacrosanct and age-old, disappears into the village, as the rest of the pilgrims return to their most vulgar pastimes, alcohol or drugs, yoga or prayer, sleep or sex.
* * *
And that’s how they spend their days until the sun sets, when the apostle emerges from his penance and finally raises his voice in supplication. Usually he is accompanied by an indigenous woman, much younger than him, who feeds the fire’s arabesques. And they all gather there around the nighttime fire, waiting for the apostle to pronounce the first words. Sometimes hours can pass as the man refuses to say a word, and only the moths fluttering over the fire can be heard. But there they stay, united by an obscure belief, gathered around the fire of an unknown passion. They make a bizarre group. Here a high European, there an American with a shaved head, beside him a Central European woman with long braids who smiles when she sees the natives go by, a young girl whose face bears the signs of tired illusion. Frayed shirts, painted faces, plastic rosaries, and candles lit to honor saints. Credulous hippies gathering to imagine a different world as evening falls over an insomniac country. And there, among the stinking pigs and third-world garbage, there they are: an everyday family lost in the labyrinth of belief, lost in an immense jungle, waiting for the prayers of a man whose arms are tattooed with an incomplete story of cataclysm and fire, of an enormous tree in a false landscape. They believe. And that belief drives them to wait a little longer.
* * *
There they are, a model family—deluxe, straight out of a magazine. They’ve managed to shake off fame, but they haven’t been able to get rid of the other, much more primitive layer that is beauty. And as the pilgrims congregate before the fire, the family shines like stars in an opaque constellation. A beautiful family, a model family, surrounded by a crepuscular world.
* * *
When the apostle starts to talk, he begins by looking at them. He lets out a light word and leaves it hanging in the air, and his eyes land on that girl with chestnut hair and dark eyes who now coughs again, leaning behind her mother. She is deeply shy. The girl has her mother’s fragile elegance, her father’s hushed conviction. Watching the child try to hide behind her mother, looking at her as if speaking only to her, the apostle begins his sermon. His naked torso facing the flames, the fire lighting up that impressive tattooed trunk, he speaks of a final jungle storm, a last whirlwind that will reduce everything to a single point. He speaks of endings, and he cites sacred scriptures with a fluency far removed from his usual reticence. He finally takes his gaze from the girl, and with his eyes fixed on the fire, he speaks of islands and horizons, of underground worlds and millenary disasters. Then he returns to his prayer and the pilgrims around him listen, immersed in a belief that seems to devour everything in its path. He speaks of the great fallen tree and the small seer, and his face takes on an unusual expressiveness, an awful joy that holds madness. Then the indigenous woman who has spent the afternoon with him brings a little bottle, and he drinks. After a few minutes his eyes become flexible, and his gaze is lost beyond the fire. He starts to laugh then, a great peal of laughter that rings out in the night. The pilgrims begin to laugh as well, without reason or direction, while the night grows, fearful, cold, and distant, around the ten-year-old girl, who coughs again, like she’s interrupting a party.
5
Her father, meanwhile, stares into the fire. As the apostle returns to his monologue, the father observes the furious swirls that leap from the bonfire and thinks of his childhood. He remembers being in the backyard of his house, between two olive trees, a magnifying glass in hand, focusing solar energy on th
e surface of an old newspaper. At first it was only light, a circle that shrank to a mere dot, where, happy and brief, the first flames would start to dance. Then the paper would wither and very soon there would be nothing but ashes and the flare of satisfaction in a mischievous boy.
The father remembers the distant afternoon when he and his friends were playing and set a fire, accidentally burning his mother’s kitchen. Suddenly he’s invaded by the intuition that the origin of photography is in fire. He snaps a photo. He thinks of the light and the flash, but also of that singular process that carries us from a simple equation to the phenomenon he now has in front of him, and he tells himself that the world is full of impossible translations, misunderstood languages. He thinks of the summer afternoon, years ago, when he swore to someday reach the edge of the world called Tierra del Fuego. He remembers how everything back then seemed possible, distant, epic. He’s left that open future far behind, along with the Haifa sunsets and his mother’s rough voice. Still further behind is the unstoppable will of that boy who sat in his provincial corner and imagined the world as an open horizon just waiting for him and his thirst for adventure. More than twenty years have passed since he swore to reach the end of the world, and he still hasn’t done it. Listening to the apostle’s hallucinatory sermon, he intuits that he will not manage it now, either. Much as this man talks of endings and fires, of lands looking always to the south, they won’t reach the true south that he’d imagined and longed for as a teenager. He’s surrounded, he realizes, by a tribe of obsessives who will throw themselves into the fire for this apostle. He looks at the fire, looks at his wife, and thinks that if he is here, it’s for her. She believes, because she has fire in her blood.
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