Silent Island

by Pablo Poveda

  “Silence is the language that we use in the Brotherhood to reach God,” Cornelius said. “It is necessary to lose one’s selfness in order to listen.”

  Our new guru explained that the central speck of the circumference represented God’s presence everywhere and in everything. Apparently, God had multiple interpretations for them. It was one of the oldest prehistoric symbols known to mankind. Then he wondered how we had taken so long to figure it out. I nodded, feigning interest in his talk that was nothing more than a preamble to demonstrate Blanca his infomercial wisdom. She listened to him, engrossed in his hypnotic voice, listening carefully to every word he said, and unknowingly, allowing him to invade her mind.

  “How will all of this help us?” I asked. “In our relationship.”

  Both of them looked at me.

  He smiled.

  “We often think that silence is the equivalent of nothingness,” he said, “but we are wrong. Silence encompasses many forms within. When we learn to listen to it from within ourselves, we can understand it. This is how we get an answer, and this is how you will get yours.”

  “Quite simplistic,” I said.

  He raised his index, warning me about something that I did not understand at that moment but would later learn.

  “The most sophisticated often lies in simplicity,” he said. “Don’t let yourself be guided by what you see. It’s nothing but an illusion. Why don’t you join us this afternoon for a session?”

  “It sounds great,” Blanca said.

  The conversation had taken on a different nuance, that of closeness and familiarity. He was using some of his trickery to bring us to the ground he wanted, and Blanca took the bait like a clueless prey. I stared at one of those circles that expressed so much and nothing at once. All the symbols looked suspicious. While using God and his omnipresence as inspiration, one did not have to be very insightful to realize that Cornelius intended to portray himself as a godsend. He was the speck in the center of the circle. It all boiled down to that. From one point of view, he was the penetration in our mind, the eye who saw everything; our eyes and ourselves were an extension of his vision and himself. Thus, one could find another interpretation: he was what gave life to the circle, which completed the rest, and without it, the circumference lacked its balance. While I reflected on all those things, Blanca wasted no time to demonstrate her astonishment at the cheap tricks and mind juggling that any second-class mentalist could have performed before a drunken audience.

  Girls are usually more prone to fall for this kind of cheap trickery that involves cold readings such as chiromancy, tarot, divination, and other fair tricks and require that the trickster collect information that the subject unwittingly reveals.

  Subjects as subjective as the existence of the self, who we are, or where we come from are the baits of choice. It was always about the same. Blanca softened like a slab of butter on a hot pan.

  Other members started to appear out of nowhere. Most of them were middle-aged couples who transmitted a strange aura of mysticism. Calm and smiling, they greeted Cornelius, who invited them to enter one of the rooms. The complete looseness of their words gave me the impression that they had been sedated with obscene amounts of morphine, which turned everything more confusing and perplexing at the same time.

  My increasing interest was the result of seeing those beings that I would hardly categorize as humans. Their gazes were lost in the void, their presence vacant of personality, their haircuts and clothes uncharacteristic, and their voices calm and robotic. Both men and women fit the same description. There was no room for individuality, nuance, nor innuendo. Their attires were correct, without the proper carelessness people often incur when they are getting dressed. They were mere smiling subjects willing to serve at the pleasure of their guide.

  “This way,” said Cornelius as he led us to the end of the corridor. We crossed a double door like the emergency exits at old movie theaters. That was the entrance to an old gymnasium. I deduced that place must have been a dojo at other times. They had put away the mats that would later work as carpets. The walls were white, the windows had been bricked up, and a blinding light shone down the center, where Cornelius would later zero on.

  The doors were closed. I heard the door being latched from the outside. I would have to behave myself if I wanted to get out of there the way I had come in.

  “I have goosebumps,” Blanca told me.

  “What are you saying?” I asked. “Don’t you see all these people? They’re mentally diminished.”

  “Isn’t it exciting?” she replied.

  “Are you alright?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m just in character.”

  “He’s using tricks,” I said. “Be careful.”

  “Do you think I bought his little act?”

  “Be careful,” I repeated. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Nothing will happen to me,” she said and smiled.

  A girl approached us and gave us two white robes. They were wide and made of linen.

  “Please,” she said. “They’re for the session. White is the color of harmony”

  We took them without asking questions and put them on. The participants made a circle in the center of the room, and we joined them. The formation intended to represent the same circles from the posters. I looked around and found no surveillance cameras. They kept no record whatsoever of whatever happened in there. A perfect place to drown them all with gas. I came up with several theories but stuck up to one — orgies where everyone participated with one another, wearing masks and robes.

  I wondered how Hidalgo had gotten into that. He was either madly in love with that girl to end up like that, or monumentally screwed up. The group checked every single characteristic of a sect or lodge — the symbols, the ritual, a uniform, and a hierarchy. In this case, they had assembled a system of symbolisms departing from the circle and merging it with the Sun to make it more meaningful. From that point on, it was only a matter of borrowing other symbols from astrology, mathematics, physics, and even references from other sects to give their system of beliefs a robust appearance. Their arguments relied on circular thinking that borrowed from philosophies like the beginning and the end, yin and yang, Confucius, Taoism, and everything and nothingness.

  And Blanca was beginning to become one with nothingness.

  I still wanted to think that she was still part of my everything and that that session would mean nothing in my life. But I figured that was the typical thought process of an initiate because that is precisely what they do. Initiates are skeptical until they attain mastery. The only thing that differentiated me from other initiates scattered throughout history was that I was an anti-hero; I was finished before I even started; I had no future nor destiny, willing to create instability without intending to. A harbinger of chaos. That was me. That was my whole life, and that place was unsafe for everyone.

  Cornelius showed up wearing a black tunic very appropriate for the occasion. A red-haired woman escorted him to the center of the circle and then joined the rest. The light fell on him, forming a circle around his body. The lights went off; everything sank into the darkness and silence. The only visible thing was the white tunics, but the faces remained hidden in the gloom. Blanca and I turned to each other. She nodded with her head.

  We knelt on the floor. That was an oriental posture, ubiquitous in meditation and martial arts. Pain would later turn into a state of alertness. They all placed their hands on their thighs. Cornelius greeted us. He kept silent. Then he spoke again.

  “Brothers and sisters” he started saying, “among us today, is a couple of initiates. Like the rest of you, they have come here because of the cause. Because there always is a cause that brings them here.”

  He instructed us to breathe. He did not mention our names, nor did he say anything about our problems. That was the therapy — relaxing in the circle. He began to conduct a guided meditation, one of those exercises that I had seen so many times on
television. However, Cornelius had a unique way. His induction method relied on the paraphernalia with which he decorated his hypnosis.

  “Listen to the silence. Free yourselves from your boundaries and listen to the silence,” he kept repeating. It was impossible for me to focus — on what? How the hell was I to listen to something out of silence. I started to get nervous. “The shape will manifest itself in your mind. Recall its color, its shape, and we’ll observe it.”

  I looked around and could vaguely see Blanca in the dark, her eyes closed, focusing on the exercise, completely relaxed. She looked like an angel, dressed in that white robe, and her hair on the shoulders; a soft and innocent countenance that brought back her childhood and sweetness. I took another look at the rest; they remained the same, breathing, searching their form deep within. I looked at Cornelius who was staring at me.

  He had recognized me.

  “Hold on, brothers and sisters. It looks like we have a disturbance,” he said, fixing his gaze on me. People woke up from their trance abruptly, like fish taken out of the water. A low murmur surrounded us in the dark. In the center, Cornelius pointed at me, illuminated in the limelight like the almighty center. “It is not possible to find the shape if one of us, one of us does not have it within him to believe. We cannot vibrate in the same frequency nor orbit in the same direction. Do you think you are superior? More intelligent?”

  The question fell flat.

  I kept silent. Blanca looked at me in disappointment.

  “Come on, tell me. You think this is stupid, don’t you?”

  “No,” I said forced by my inner self. I could not understand what was happening to me. It was another one of his tricks.

  Everyone looked at me. My voice echoed loudly in the room.

  “Well, well, well,” said Cornelius. His initial sympathy was gone. “Really, you are free to leave if you think this is nonsense.”

  “I don’t think it is,” I replied. “It’s just... not for me.”

  “Uh-huh,” he uttered. “This isn’t for you... What is?”

  “Not this,” I replied. “We have come to solve the problems in our relationship, and I doubt this sham will help.”

  Blanca punched me in the arm.

  “You see yourselves in him, don’t you?” Cornelius said, addressing the rest. “There is an incredulous brother among us. In him, I can see many of you. What is your name?”

  “Gabriel.”

  “Brother Gabriel,” he said. He had everyone’s attention, standing there in his ridiculous black robe and under the light from the ceiling. “Come here.”

  “What?”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Come.”

  Everyone looked at me. I could see their eyes in the dark, glowing like wild cats’ at night. I looked at Blanca, my only support, whose eyes begged me to give in.

  I walked up to him. With a smile, he greeted me and placed two fingers behind my collarbone. He looked me in the eye, smiled, and pressed, hurting me, hurting me badly. I screamed, kneeling before him, powerless and dejected.

  “Stop!” I shouted. “You’re hurting me, fuck!”

  “Resist!” he said energetically. “Find your silence!”

  Nobody moved. I was becoming a sack of flesh and bone at his feet, almost on the ground, while he squeezed harder and harder.

  “A-a-argh!”

  “Come on, Gabriel!” he shouted. “Find your shape! God is in you! Breathe him in! Invite him in with your silence! Pain is illusory!”

  I stopped screaming and breathed deeply with my abdomen. I put up with the pain, that ceased little by little, grabbed his arm, and got up until I found myself face to face with him. I looked him in the eye. Cornelius gently pulled his fingers away. When I was about to punch him in the face, he placed a hand on my heart and smiled again. He broke my trance and gave me a big hug. I hugged him back, I hugged him tight. I felt like a child anew, relaxed, smoking like a fired gun. Everyone looked at me, and I looked them back over Cornelius’s shoulder. Some wanted to celebrate; I could see the joy held back in their eyes. Instead, their sealed lips concealed their emotions. Cornelius patted me several times on the back. He smelled of fresh cologne, and I felt the vibration of his patting in my rib cage. There under the light, I was reinvigorated and revitalized. I stood in front of him.

  “Thank you,” I said, not sure why. Perhaps because of the euphoria of the moment and being the center of attention.

  “You won’t reject me again, understood?” he said and touched his chin, repeating the gesture. “Now go and join the rest.”

  Stunned, I returned back to my seat. Blanca smiled at me, the stranger to my other side did too.

  “Congratulations,” the man said.

  I thanked him and turned to Cornelius. He put one hand up in the air and the other over his face. We kept silent for several minutes, breathing in unison. The session ended shortly after. We left the gymnasium through the same door and walked into some shelves with books written by Cornelius. It was the merchandising for the initiates. Passive work at home. I got a book and a CD with guided meditations. If I wanted to find out what had happened to Hidalgo, I had to become one of them.

  At the exit, I waited for Blanca, smoking a cigarette at the door. I had left her in the locker room. When I finished smoking, I walked inside again and saw her talking to Cornelius. I did not understand what she was up to, or if she had succumbed to his conman charm. She was paying too much attention to him and that frankly made me jealous. I liked the girl, and that bastard — innocent or not — had all the earmarks of being a first-class crook.

  I walked out and waited for her next to her scooter. She came out several minutes later.

  “What took you so long?” I asked her, holding another cigarette in my lips.

  “Are you my father now?” she replied. I noticed that she was blushing. “Calm down, Gabriel. You need to work on your silence.”

  “Fuck off!”

  “Let’s go home,” she said. “I found something interesting.”

  “So did I,” I said. “You should be careful.”

  “Gabriel,” she said looking me in the eye. “I’ve told you already; everything is under control.”

  “If you say so,” I replied and grabbed a helmet from the trunk.

  She started the vehicle, took off the leg, and we got out of there.

  The next day, I learned what she had achieved.

  Blanca had a date with Cornelius and had not told me.

  I was furious and decided to follow them.

  That man was messing with the wrong person.

  * * *

  Days later, I was back in my apartment. Living with Blanca was starting to get awkward. We had lost contact after the session at the center. She started talking on the phone a lot, and I suspected it would be Cornelius. However, she refused to give me any sort of explanation. Maybe I overreacted, or perhaps I was not that good at concealing my jealousy. Whatever it was, I packed up my stuff and took a bus to my old abode. Everything was the way I had left it after she saved my neck.

  I cleaned up the rooms and got rid of all the garbage I found in them. I ripped the posters off the walls, leaving only Coltrane’s on. I removed the old stickers I had placed on the walls, the photos of my youth. I wanted to become someone new. The apartment looked like a junkie’s den, dirty and stinky. In a few hours, I parted with everything that I no longer needed, even my aunt’s furniture, that in a moment of clarity, I realized that I had no use for whatsoever. When I was done, there was more space, and one could breathe better. I changed the layout of the rooms. I felt as new, refreshed. For some reason, I wanted to remove all traces of what had happened. Finding myself in a seemingly new place was a way to eliminate the ghosts that haunted me. Coltrane’s old CD case was on a shelf, empty and desolate. I threw it away too. Goodbye Coltrane, until always, I said to myself, I will carry you in my heart. I turned on an old radio and tuned some jazz; that was all I had left. That reminded me of a reading by B
ukowski — with his radio playing a classical music station. He admitted to only listening to that, possibly because he was poorer — much poorer than me — and cheap because a good recording by Coltrane was not that expensive.

  I sat by the radio and enjoyed the moment. I lit a cigarette and sat on the floor. It was uncomfortable, but I wanted to be there, feel the buttocks icy cold, feel that everything was still real. I put the cigarette butt out and went to the kitchen. I took a bottle of beer, and an old can of Baygon caught my attention. That little detail triggered me to reflect on more than just the existence of bugs in the apartment. I reflected on that stage of my life that was everything for me, yet it meant nothing. Past, present, and future events would not mark a milestone for anyone, regardless of their failure or success. I reflected on the activity of reflecting. It had been weeks since I stopped to think about something, abstracted by all that shit that polluted my mind and distracted me. I wondered what the purpose of life was. Were we meant to live in a constant present, absorbed by menial tasks that kept us busy? Perhaps that saying that goes, “life is what happens while we do other things” was right. After all, we spent our lives performing absurd tasks that we were ordered to do. Since elementary school, and until our working days, life was what occurred in the background while we received orders from others. We had been born to order and be ordered. That was the only way to settle in: accept routine as the ultimate destination, and not to rebel over the defiant and fearsome presence of chaos.

  I thought about myself, what I was doing there, and why I did it. I started wondering why I wanted the things I wanted or why I listened to Coltrane instead of Parker. I began wondering about so many things that I had to open another bottle. I felt depression strike in the stomach. Much like love, depression is a mental construction that — despite being fictitious — feels so powerful. Self-validation was a new commodity to prevent reflection. The Internet was slowly killing reflection and thought as expected processes. Thought had become a right, and sooner or later, it would become a collection piece. Next to that can of Baygon, I felt invigorated and relieved, diving into the depths of my mind. Life was what happened while I drank a beer by a can of Baygon. Suddenly, I smiled, drunk and cheerful because I was living my own experience. I was crazy, crazy to live, and more alive than ever, so much so that a reminder of my life came in the form of acid liquid going up my esophagus and straight into the sink.