A Prison in the Sun

by Isobel Blackthorn

  You are you, dear raven, and I am me. We were born the way we became. The seed is destined to grow in its own unique fashion. The blue dress did not make me gay, and I did not choose to be gay. I came to know I desired men as the seed in me burst forth from my loins. And there was nothing I could do to change that. I could not dye my feathers to transform my own desires. We know, do we not, my raven friend, we know what the world cares not to know. We are who we are. Final.

  The raven turns away, its interest distracted by a soft rustle behind us. My eyes are drawn to the face of the cliff rising up to either side of me, jagged columns of dark rock plummeting to the impossible deep.

  A Confronting Revelation

  José was gay and it was obvious to him as it was to me that his sexuality had nothing to do with pretty blue dresses.

  The story had an historical setting. A young man suffering social rejection for being gay didn't fit in the contemporary zeitgeist, at least, not in the western world. Even in the Canary Islands, after General Franco's repression came to an end, attitudes must have shifted, modernised, and they definitely had by the millennium when presumably the author of this protagonist would have been a child. Therefore, it stood to reason that if the script was memoir, and it was set in an age more traditional than this, the 1950s, say, then the author could not be the young man washed up on the beach. Unless Juan wrote the manuscript in the style of memoir. I took a closer look at the pages, trying to ascertain the age of paper and ink, but it would need an expert, not me, to make an assessment.

  The story was more than likely pretending to be memoir. A memoir of an unhappy young gay man sitting on the edge of a cliff, reflecting back on his childhood. Then there were those passages set somewhere else, where a man was forced to draw water from an old well. That must also be José. Unless the script was just a collection of disconnected ramblings. I hoped not. Although, I kept pushing away the thought that the story had something to do with the hostel. I had to, or I would have folded up that Spanish script and returned it to its hiding place, for every atom of my being wanted nothing to do with that trauma. It was too confronting. In all, I was curious to see how the story of José and the raven would end.

  I closed the laptop and tried to get some sleep. Too soon, the early-morning light glinted through the shutters and the sun's radiant heat penetrated the glass and warmed me as I lay in my bed.

  The area around my desk would be warmer still, but the story locked in a foreign language was compelling and after a quick shower, I made coffee, swallowed a Clen and resumed my work on the script.

  I had to squint at the next words of bunched-up writing and entered what I could make out into the online translator. The foreignness of the language, the tiny cramped lettering, the too-often illegible quality of the prose took their toll, and I grew increasingly frustrated and impatient. Scanning the pages, it appeared the quality of the writing deteriorated further as the story progressed, and the only saving grace that kept me persevering were the page numbers. At least, I was guaranteed the certainty of knowing how the original was meant to flow. I had an image of myself as a monk or a scribe in a dark and damp chamber, faced with translating by candlelight some ancient scroll in Hebrew or Aramaic, a scroll all torn and foxed.

  Over and again, I had to consult online dictionaries and cross-check possibilities to discover what the author had meant. I pressed on, determined to get to the end of the second page, where an indent in the text indicated a paragraph break.

  I kept going, despite realising very early in the morning's labour, that the narrative had returned to that tortuous scene at the old well.

  * * *

  So much water! Two men trudged back across the rocky field, in each hand a full pail. About halfway to their destination, they passed another two men, each with two empty pails. The exchange of buckets went on for hours, and by the time the guard said, 'Stop,' the sun was fast on the way to its zenith.

  I slogged back to the compound under the gaze of the lone girl waiting for her turn to use the well. When we had traversed fifty metres, I stole a glance back. She was tethering her camel to the beam where I had stood, a man doing a camel's work, now a camel doing a man's. I almost laughed, but my amusement soon faded.

  There was grit in my boot. Pink grit, for that was the colour of the ground beneath my feet. Ground so dry my footsteps made puffs of dust. I had become familiar with the plain, the mountains, the searing heat and the infernal wind. I had become familiar with the aching fatigue in my bones. Hunger weakened me, and my vision blurred. I kept my sights on the windmill, the landmark guiding me back. The guard ambled behind. There was no need for him to stay close. There was nowhere to run even if I had the energy.

  I arrived back at the compound to find the prisoners lined up in the quadrangle. As my feet hit the concrete, four men were ushered around the back. I heard the splash of water, the guards' voices filled with venom, the jeers.

  For once, we were permitted to get clean. I would have rather stayed dirty, but I took my place in the queue. I was the last in line. The guard in the quadrangle watched on at some distance as one by one the men were summoned until it was only me left standing.

  There was a shout, a pained cry, then laughter.

  'Go,' the guard ordered.

  'Dirty stinking whore!'

  I could hear the insults before I turned the corner. The guards were in fine fettle; they slung-shot their abuses, battering us with their vitriol. But their fists were worse.

  The water in the old trough was dirty. A thick film of soap scum floated on the surface. Under the wrath-fuelled gaze of the guards, I removed my clothing, reached for the soap and wet my body with the water in the trough. Another prisoner hurled a bucket of clean water on me. There was a soft murmur of amusement among the prisoners. A guard growled. I soaped myself all over my body as fast as I was able. Then, just as I was about to reach for the last bucket to rinse my soap-caked skin, the guard stepped forward with a kick, and I watched the bucket topple, and its contents pool and disappear into the thirsty ground.

  The uproar of laughter that ensued came only from the guards.

  The sun crusted the soap on my skin as I gathered my filthy clothes and skulked back to the cell – one of three, barn-like buildings lined up in a row below the compound.

  * * *

  I sat back in disbelief. There could be no doubt this was the story of the hostel when it was used to incarcerate gay men. Had to be. The pink grit. The quadrangle. The windmill. The guards with their pointed “whore” insults. And then the cells themselves, which were described exactly as I had found them.

  The story started to make more sense. This was not a memoir. It was a story recently written – I could tell that much from the fact that up until that single prisoner, Octavio Garcia, spoke out, the story of the prison was unknown and untold – but a question remained. What had Juan been doing writing all this? He might have been related to Paco and the guys at the gym but who had he been, really? A closet writer? Gay? Someone with close connections to one of the prisoners? Or did this writing come from someone else, and Juan had stolen it along with the cash. He might not even have known it was there.

  It didn't seem to matter. What did matter was how to make full use of the draft.

  My thoughts stopped in their tracks as my earlier misgivings rose up to hold sway. The soap scene had the makings of good prose and I had been seduced by that, enticed into relating a story I wanted nothing to do with. When I considered my circumstances, cooped up in this small if charming apartment, determined to avoid the owners of the establishment, unable to return to Tefía due to my ridiculous lie about the rats and forced to maintain another lie as to the whereabouts of the rucksack, it was little wonder I was happy to be side-tracked. I was on guard duty, locked away with little to do. But a short scene of conditions in the prison was one thing, an entire book another, and I reminded myself I would need to immerse myself fully in that prison, lock myself away in one of those ce
lls as though I too, were gay, and to do that, I would need a lot of more than just those handwritten pages. I would need to partake in thorough background research into Franco's era and Canary Islands' culture, politics and society, all of it in a language I had little understanding of. I would, to all intents and purposes, need to be this protagonist, José.

  There remained the possibility that sitting on my bed were the pages of a draft that could lead me to my grail, a prize-winning book that would make Sandra Flint genuflect before me, begging forgiveness.

  I was on a precipice. I couldn't make up my mind whether to leap or resist. There was nothing for it. I opened Skype and called Angela. In the time it took for her to answer my call, I had my story straight.

  'Hey, you,' she said.

  I stared into her beaming face and grinned.

  'I have some news.'

  She shifted, reached behind her for something beyond my view, then ran a hand through her thick mop of hair and said, 'Must be good. Shoot.'

  'I have decided to pursue the gay prison book.'

  Her mouth fell open.

  'Common sense at last! What made you change your mind?'

  'I gave what you said a lot of thought. And I couldn't come up with a better idea so…'

  By then, lying had become second nature, a reflex that stirred in me unease as my conscience grappled for justifications, and ambition sat back indifferently.

  'How will you approach it?' she said, all eager-eyed.

  'I have that worked out, too. I had this idea that the protagonist – let's call him José – is sitting on the edge of a cliff talking to a bird.'

  'A bird?'

  I clicked on the document, open at the first paragraphs.

  'A raven.'

  'Go on.'

  'He narrates segments from his childhood, interspersed with scenes in the prison.'

  'It's a start.'

  'You like it?'

  'Yes,' she said slowly. 'But why the raven? Why have your protagonist sitting at a cliff edge talking to a bird?'

  I fumbled for an answer.

  'You know how it goes. That first moment of inspiration. I had to get into the story somehow and that is what came to me.'

  'Fair enough. I suppose you were visiting a cliff and suddenly it hit you. There are some terrific cliffs on the island. Further south from where you are.'

  'They're magnificent,' I said, hoping she would move on.

  'What are your resources?' she said. 'You can't read Spanish.'

  My disingenuous self was quick off the mark with, 'I am paying a friend here to translate that novella I linked you to.'

  'Good plan. I hope they aren't charging you too much, though. Another author friend who is bilingual dipped into that book and said there was a lot of religious waffle in it.'

  'You showed the novella to another author!'

  'Keep your hair on. She isn't interested. Says she has enough to contend with writing a pithy novel set in Dresden and Dachau.'

  I groaned. 'Not another Nazi novel.'

  'Afraid so. The market's appetite is insatiable.' She paused. 'Pity she isn't interested in the Spanish one, though. She would have done a good job.'

  'And I won't?' I said, instantly defensive.

  'I didn't say that. You didn't want to do it. You were categorical about it, if you recall.'

  'Well, I have changed my mind.'

  'Clearly so. And I am delighted for you, Trevor. I told you all along it was the story you needed to write. Might be the making of you. And I won't show that novella to another soul. Promise.'

  'Please don't.'

  'Before you go, word from one of the judges is your Sandra Flint is almost certainly set to win.'

  'She is not my Sandra Flint.'

  'You know what I mean. Don't be sour, Trevor. You are beginning to sound like my father. Must dash.'

  She blew me a kiss and ended the call, leaving me to recover from her parting shot. Her father? That bombastic misogynist! The last time I had seen him was at Angela's wedding. He had sat near the band and sloshed champagne, eyeing his daughter's new wife with varying degrees of venom and contempt. I was nothing like the old trout!

  I went downstairs and swallowed a Clen, remembering as the pill went down that I had taken one only hours earlier. I chased the fat burner with a glass of juice, then pressed on with the translation.

  I had planned on tackling shoulder day at the gym, but I no longer felt inclined to leave the apartment until the translation was done and the whole draft safely on my laptop in English.

  The fragmented narrative continued, and I found myself back in José's childhood.

  My School Years

  My dear raven, it has never been easy being me. I was born at the wrong time, in the wrong place, into a punitive faith, ahead of my time perhaps, and there is no time for society to catch up, even if it wanted to, which it doesn't. My difficulties grew as I did, growing larger by the year. I will tell you how it was to be a cuckoo in a nest of pretty yellow birds and with the raven's view, you will know what happened to my soul.

  A decade passed. Maria hadn't required her brother's involvement in her games for a long time. She was seventeen, and her mind floated, and whenever her eyes settled on José, they were filled with what could only be described as hatred.

  It was the same spite that José saw in his brother, Jesús, a robust thirteen-year-old with a passion for sports and an ambition, barely formed and founded on adoration, to study law. Jesús was the apple of his father's eye. Maria seemed to please her mother despite her fiery temper. Two parents, two children. Plus one. Sitting in the dining room eating meatballs cooked in a thick, bean stew, a familiar feeling returned to fill his belly. It felt to José as though he was spare, superfluous and unnecessary, the tyre kept in the car boot. He had to fight for attention from either parent. He was squashed in the middle between his dominant siblings, where there was no room and no choice but to wither or rebel.

  Isn't that simply a structural thing, the lot of the one in between? It might be a curse but it needn't be. It needn't crush the morale. The various agents playing their roles in the confines of the family structure, they have influence. They have free will. My in-between status is one thing, my family's rejection of me as a worthy member of the fold another.

  You know, raven, Regina and Juan Ramos did not have to overlook me, their son, their middle child, with eyes that refused to settle for fear of what they might find. A reflection of themselves perhaps, one that turned their pious stomachs, for what I saw in their eyes and heard in their words was more than a nervous apprehension that all was not quite right with their once precious José.

  'I should never have given them that blue dress to play with,' my mother was fond of saying. For Regina had seen me wearing that dress at the impressionable age of five, and she had observed at a near distance her darling boy fail to grow into a wholesome man. She did a simple maths sum and came up with a false answer. My gender preference had nothing whatsoever to do with that damn blue dress.

  José isn't quite right. That would be my father.

  Stop that mannerism; it doesn't suit you. Mother, again.

  He's far too pretty.

  Thank you, but I prefer “handsome”.

  His voice isn't quite the right pitch.

  It is the same pitch as yours, father dear.

  He doesn't walk right. I'm sure I saw him mince.

  That was the school play.

  Keep your hands still in your lap and stop flapping them about.

  I never did that. I am sure of it.

  He's a sissy.

  I am a man.

  Little wonder they ridicule him at school.

  Children are cruel. They act out their parents' prejudices.

  The way he giggles and prefers to play with the girls.

  Always the scrutiny. Always the judgements. I am a man who desires other men and that's the end of it.

  I laugh at the absurdity, a loud, guttural laugh, and
the raven is startled and opens his wings to take flight.

  Relax, bird. I am nothing to be afraid of.

  There were many lovely times growing up in La Laguna. I can recall one of those, a very good time it was. My tenth birthday and my parents agreed to a party. We were allowed one friend each, and all our cousins came. They were from Santa Cruz and from La Orotava. The two sets of grandparents were there, as were my various aunts and uncles.

  I invited my best friend Enrico, who lives in a house on the corner of our street, or should I say lived for I have no idea if he is still there. His father is or was a chemist, a peculiar man, widowed and dour, and we always played at my place.

  It was a warm and sunny day in March of 1945. World War II was drawing to a close. Of course, I didn't know much about that. I didn't know about the horrors of that war, of the brutality and death and the concentration camps. I had no idea of human suffering, my own or anyone else's. The closest I had come to real pain was when Maria had done my hair or when I shut my thumb in a door. I didn't know about the deprivations of my people either, of how hard the peasant farmers worked to subsist, of the starvation and mass migrations to Venezuela. I was ten and I existed in blissful ignorance of real life, near and far. I could, therefore, have had no idea of the unreasonableness of all that suffering. I lived in a nice bourgeois home in La Laguna, and that is all I knew.

  My parents' house, which was my house then, has an internal patio filled with plants and tall windows with Juliet balconies looking down on a cobbled street. It was paradise.

  José almost collided with Jesús and, avoiding him, hit a potted plant. He had just spent the last hour running about with Enrico. He was dizzy from too much sugar and too much joy. Earlier, when he broke the piñata he insisted he have on this very special day – a piñata Maria helped his mother make – and the had patio exploded in an uproar of cheers and a cascade of sweets fell all around, his heart had been fit to burst in his chest.