by Carlos Eire
They sang of surrender, tirelessly and joyfully, like some celestial choir.
Irenaeus of Lyons, a second-century Christian bishop, once said that in the world to come, the fruits and vegetables will all beg to be picked and eaten, and actually try to outshout one another, all crying in unison, “Pick me, eat me, eat me.” The first time I ever read that passage in Irenaeus, years later, I thought of the sound made by bowling pins when they’re struck by a fast-rolling ball.
“Knock us down, hit us as hard as possible. Kill us, reduce us to splinters.”
And could there be any sight sweeter than those pins scattering in all directions?
Controlled violence. Deconstruction of the highest sort: the kind that doesn’t get you in trouble because it’s never permanent and it’s been turned into a game.
But those ridiculous bowling shoes. They put a damper on things. They belonged on clowns, not on normal people.
Tony and I had been enrolled in bowling lessons by our foster parents, and we were driven to the alley twice a week for what seemed to be a good part of that summer but might have only been a few weeks. We’d never taken lessons in any sport or game, much less in one so well designed to harness our destructive instincts. Wearing those stupid shoes was a small price to pay for the privilege of bowling.
We were the only Cubans in that alley.
“One, two, three, slide, release . . .” Keep your eyes on those small arrows inlaid into the gleaming, thickly varnished wooden boards. It all seemed so easy, and so much fun. But it was harder than it looked. Gutter balls are one of the saddest sights on earth, and so much easier to achieve than strikes. The inescapable down that comes with every up, the funeral that’s at the other end of every baby shower, the divorce that no one wants to imagine on their wedding day.
Coño, que mierda.
I didn’t do so well in my first full game. I scored a sixty-eight, but I didn’t really care. The real challenge was not scoring higher than others, but topping that score in the days to come and keeping the ball out of the gutter, forever more.
The bowling was just a bonus surprise during that great summer of 1962. If I wasn’t swimming, I was having fun some other way. Lots of it. Yes, Miami was much hotter than Cuba, but I didn’t let that stop me. Living in an air-conditioned house allowed me to scoff at the heat, which was unlike any I’d experienced up until then. The scorching sun was manageable too. After one severe sunburn that laid me out for about three days, I was fully protected from the killer sun by a nice tan.
I kept getting letters from my parents every week that told me everything was all right at their end, and I kept sending them six-page letters like clockwork, in which I detailed all my adventures. I know my dad saved them all. He saved everything. But God only knows what happened to the letters after he died.
How I’d love to get my hands on them now. Especially the one where I described the first time I crossed the causeway into Miami Beach at night. I’d never seen anything so unearthly, so ethereal, so hard to describe.
Miami had this one advantage over Havana: You could drive out into the sea, and look back at its skyline while you were also looking ahead to other islands and their own skylines. Two for the price of one, like everything else in America. Excess taken beyond its limits. All that was lacking were a few city gates made of precious stones, gold, or silver.
If the New Jerusalem were to descend from heaven onto some spot in America, there would have to be at least two of them, at minimum, and they’d both have to be equally outlandish and way over-the-top.
My mom kept getting ever closer to her goal of leaving the accursed island Tony and I had left behind. Her visa and exit permit were just over the horizon, she kept telling me. It was only a matter of weeks before she’d be able to join us in Miami. Carlos loved that, but Charles always had questions. What would Marie Antoinette do in Miami? How would we live? Would we end up in a shotgun shack, like the Becquers? And what about Louis XVI, who’d be staying behind? What would it be like not to have a father, or a swimming pool next door?
I had better things to do than to worry about the future, however. Who cares? The present was mighty fine, and getting better and better.
Sometime during that summer I was lucky enough to break my glasses. It was an accident, I swear. I didn’t do it on purpose, although the thought of breaking them intentionally had crossed my mind. I hit a bump while riding my bike and flew off my seat. Really, really. Cross my heart and hope to die. The landing proved too much for my Cuban espejuelos: Both lenses and the tortoiseshell frame were crushed. So I ended up with some scrapes and bruises and new American eyewear: a plastic frame with round lenses, which was dark gray on the top and perfectly clear on the bottom. So new and cool, then. So 1962.
“You look much better now,” said Norma. “Now you look like all the other boys.”
Yes, I thought so too.
My English had improved enough to take its place right alongside my native tongue and to constantly elbow it out of the way. Every now and then I’d have to look up some word in the dictionary, but quite often they were words any eleven-year-old native speaker of English might have had to look up too. Like curmudgeon.
I’d grown fond of Norma and Lou, and also of their two boys, Philip and Eric. I loved my foster parents and I loved playing with their kids—something I had to learn how to do. Never before had I dealt with babies in diapers, or played their sorts of games. Philip was learning to speak; Eric was starting to walk. All I remember is that it felt good to hold them, to act like an older brother. Victor the dog was a lot of fun to have around too. And that summer I stopped speaking to him in Spanish, as I’d been doing since my arrival. Dogs can understand any language, you know, but the one they understand the best is the one you’re most comfortable with.
Fairly often, we’d go out to eat, something my family tended not to do in Havana. Louis XVI didn’t like restaurants because everything they had to offer paled in comparison to the cuisine at Versailles. My favorite restaurant in Miami was an Italian one, where they’d serve you a plate of spaghetti and meatballs larger than you could possibly eat. I’d always manage to put it away, though, and to walk out of the restaurant feeling as if I’d swallowed one of the balls at the bowling alley. Another favorite of mine was a place on Coral Way that served foot-long hot dogs. They weren’t as good as those that the Chinese hot dog man used to cook up in Havana, but they were longer, and that made them better. All of the stuff they brought to the table made up for the fact that they were boiled rather than fried: relish, onions, mustard, sauerkraut, ketchup that you could pile on the hot dog so thickly that it would all come squirting out the sides of the roll every time you took a bite. Then there was the International House of Pancakes. I’d go nuts in there trying to make up my mind about which kind of pancakes to order and what kind of syrup to use. It was so bewildering, all this choice, and so exhilarating, so totally American.
Every time I go back to Miami I try to make my way down to that International House of Pancakes, which has remained firmly fixed in the same spot, by the Westchester Shopping Center. I don’t go there to eat. No way. I just like to drive by and make sure it’s still there. No other building in the United States brings me as close to my childhood, and the pure joy that a child can feel over the simplest things, like eight different jars of syrup.
The International House of Pancakes was my antidote to The Imitation of Christ, proof positive that this world was not so bad, or so worthy of scorn.
Sauerkraut was also a great secondary antidote. Man, that stuff was charged up with a heavenly essence that convinced me of the presence of the divine in creation. Sauerkraut, of all things, was strong evidence for the existence of God.
We didn’t go to movies very often, though, and for me that was a serious problem. But it was no more irritating than bowling shoes. I could put up with this problem, as long as I could be distracted from it. There were so many other things going right. Films had been an e
ssential part of my life up until then. I lived through films, even used them to interpret my own life and put everything into perspective. But my life now was a film of sorts. I was living out a great movie script, in the land where all of the best films were made.
I missed the movie theaters, though. A real landscape had to be filled with theaters, and I hardly ever saw any, out where I lived. I also didn’t get to go into any of the ones I saw on my brief forays into downtown Miami and Coral Gables. They beckoned, but I had no way of gaining access to them.
I remember going to only one movie, the entire time I lived with the Chaits. As divine providence would have it, the film was none other than The Vikings, my favorite, the most important film of my entire childhood, which was rereleased in 1962, and played at some theater in Coral Gables.
It was so much better than I remembered, especially because this time around I didn’t have to read subtitles. I could focus entirely on the images on the screen, and I could understand everything that was being said, and even perceive the difference between the British and American accents. I was one with the actors on-screen, with no filter between me and them. Janet Leigh was more beautiful this time around, somehow. Before, I’d had a hard time understanding why men might fight over her, even kill and maim each other, but this time it made perfect sense. The final battle scene, and the duel to the death between Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, all fell into perspective, in a new way, given my increased appreciation for Janet Leigh’s eyes.
I’d made it. I was so much closer to turning Viking. After all, in this movie, all of the Vikings spoke English with American accents. And Tony Curtis not only looked a lot like Lou, my foster father, but actually spoke like him.
The Nordic setting seemed not so alien anymore, not so far away, even though I was still surrounded by palm trees and lizards rather than by fjords. I was a few inches closer to Norway on the map, and to a cold climate where everything was better. The fact that Florida was connected on the map to other states where it snowed lent an air of redemption to the place. It wasn’t as bad as Cuba, it just couldn’t be. No way. The divine grace found in snow reached beyond state boundaries.
I remained convinced that what made Europe and North America so superior to the rest of the world was their climates. Now that I was north of the Tropic of Capricorn, I felt far less inferior, and seeing The Vikings again, at this latitude, made me feel better about exile. Much, much better. Being this close to snow was a lot like being nearly redeemed.
Much as I hated to admit it, though, something kept my life from being perfect. It was something totally irrational: that feeling I’d first experienced on my first morning at the camp in Florida City. The feeling of being utterly alone and abandoned forever, of being stuck with no one but myself for eternity. The Void.
It pursued me, hidden from view.
I could ignore it most of the time because the Chait household was normally a busy place, full of people. Norma and Lou didn’t go out much, as is often the case with the parents of small children.
But they were normal folks, and every now and then they went out. And that’s when the Void would strike without hesitation or mercy.
It first attacked me one day that summer when I came home, and the house was empty. Lou was at work, and Norma had gone somewhere with the babies. As soon as no one but the dog responded to my “Hello,” I knew I was in trouble. Whoa, what is this? Ay. In a flash, the house itself was gone, and the dog with it too. I was alone, totally alone in one vast Nothingness. Alone forever and ever. Stuck with myself and no one but myself. The pain was unbearable.
Fortunately, within a few minutes Norma and the kids came home, and the pain vanished instantly. But this left me feeling more than a little spooked.
Where had this come from? Could it attack me again?
I had no clue what this was, but I recognized it immediately and I knew one thing for certain: This did not come from within me. It wasn’t something I could control. No way. This was much bigger and much more powerful than me, and it definitely came from without. It was a presence, even though its very essence was Absence.
Much to my dismay, it happened two or three times again, in exactly the same way, when I came home to an empty house. Damn. But at least these attacks didn’t last very long. As had happened the first time, the house filled up right away and the Void vanished, like a demon driven out by an exorcist.
I cruised along in between these attacks, pretending that they were stupid aberrations, something that would stop happening. Then, one fateful Saturday evening, Norma and Lou decided to go out to dinner at someone’s house and leave me with Philip and Eric. “You’re old enough to watch them,” they said. I’d already learned one of the stupidest nouns in the English language—babysitter—but it hadn’t crossed my mind that I’d end up as one.
All right, I thought: I can handle this. No problem. This is like taking out the trash: a nice assignment, a sign that I’m responsible and American. So what if Norma and Lou aren’t home for a while? The house will have other human beings in it. So what if they’re babies? Besides, I’ve gotten over those other attacks, and nothing like that can happen again, no matter what. I can handle this, yes.
Sure. No problem. At first, everything was fine. I put Philip and Eric to bed and checked on them a few times to make sure they’d gone to sleep. Philip always took his time, so this kept me busy. Check and check again. The television shows were all right. The NBC channel always had movies on Saturdays, in living color. Not crappy B movies, like you’d get in the afternoons, but really good ones that had been box office hits in theaters.
Could I have lucked out more than this? The movie tonight is River of No Return, starring Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum. Marilyn! How did this movie ever get past me? I’d never heard of it. It’s action-packed and set in the Old West during the Gold Rush. Marilyn and that bonehead Mitchum are stuck with each other on a raft, and they face all the dangers one can expect in a fast-flowing river in the Western wilderness, back when the natives outnumbered the white settlers. Mitchum is a total idiot, as is every man who is paired up with Marilyn on-screen, and every man linked to any woman who has made her way into your heart. But Marilyn is Marilyn. I don’t care what she says or does. I just like to look at her.
I figure Norma and Lou will be back before the movie is over at eleven.
Victor keeps me company. He lies down at my feet and stays there as I spend time with Marilyn. He’s my watchdog, my friend, better than any guardian angel. Ten o’clock. Ten thirty. I start to feel a little shaky. Where are they? That feeling hovers over me. I have no name for it, but I recognize it immediately.
Eleven o’clock. The movie ends. No more Marilyn. No one returns home. The local news show begins.
Whoa, Lord have mercy! I’m ambushed as never before. It’s fierce this time. I thought the first attack was bad, at Florida City, but this one makes that one look like child’s play. The Nothingness, the Absence, the utter despair is unbearable. I’m being torn to shreds. I think that I’ll surely die if this feeling doesn’t go away. I keep telling myself, again and again, that Norma and Lou will be back very soon and the pain will vanish as quickly as it showed up.
Eleven thirty. Where can they be? Why haven’t they come home yet? I don’t worry about them being in an accident or anything like that. In fact, I don’t worry at all. This is not about worrying. When you worry it’s because there’s some uncertainty to deal with. I have no uncertainties of any kind whatsoever. I know for certain that I am utterly alone and will forever be utterly abandoned, adrift in Nothingness all by myself for all eternity.
Midnight. By now I’m pacing up and down in the living room, frantically, and checking on Philip and Eric constantly. Victor senses my pain and stays close to me, following me around like the good shepherd that he is. But he seems more like an illusion than a real dog.
No pets allowed in the Void. No pets in Hell.
I’ve had a lifesaver in my pocket al
l along, a telephone number I don’t dare use, the one where I can reach Lou and Norma in case of an emergency. I’ve been wanting to call them since eleven, but haven’t dared. What can I tell them? Please come home because I’ve been suddenly transported to Hell? Yeah, sure.
They’ll just think I’m a wimp, and they’ll be mad at me for spoiling their evening.
I surprise myself. I can actually think this through as I writhe. I have a job to do, and I’m old enough to do it. I tell myself they’ll be home any minute, anyway.
But as always happens with real pain, there comes a point when you can’t stand it anymore, and something in you gives way, and you have to moan or scream. You don’t want to, but the sound comes out of your mouth and it’s weird and alien, but it helps you deal with the pain. Or you pass out, and regain consciousness moaning, hearing your own noises but refusing to accept them as yours. Or, as happens with nausea, there comes a point when your body says, Okay, enough, out with it. And you can’t hold back what your gut doesn’t want to keep.