The Colonial Hotel

by Jonathan Bennett

  I remember cola and melodies, her face close to mine, or my head on her lap or pulled to her breast. Her smell was raw earth and human. I was an injured animal and she built trust in minor increments, luring me out. Her face was open countryside, round and full, welcoming; it came into focus now and then. Her teeth were very white. Whenever I opened my eyes she smiled. I began to wish to make her smile, so I would try—with everything I had—to open my eyes. When I managed, she smiled again.

  She began to give me spoonfuls of broth that had a warm, gamey, root vegetable taste. She washed my body down. The water evaporated off my skin—a forgotten sensation, downy arm hairs standing up with a wave of tingle. She caressed my earlobes. She sang and sang.

  One day it rained and the air was heavy. She placed a wafer of unleavened bread on my tongue. My saliva came to life and I sucked on it until it dissolved. Come, this face seemed to say. Come back.

  Some strength returned, and as it did, the presence of this woman would bring on unexpected waves of shame, or perhaps self-loathing. Now I would not die. Rather I would live with, and each day confront, my dismal decision to have simply given in. Was I too hard on myself? Were the brain chemicals that allowed me to peacefully shut down and prepare for death more potent than those that would now punish me for having submitted? I report only what occurred. I am my own witness, not my own doctor.

  Her name is Oenone. She is a woman from the village that surrounds the jail. Originally, before the civil war, her people were from the very town where Helen and I were captured. She learned fair English from oil company workers. She does not know her age. These were the few answers she was able to whisper to me over the next few weeks. Or else I learned them later and have misplaced them further back in time.

  There was a new guard. He would check on us now and again, knowing that I was showing signs of improvement. He was a strong, broad-­shouldered man who did not smile. Each time he left she mocked him through gesture, in a sisterly kind of way—as if she knew him as a spindly boy, and could see right through his new-found authority. I could not yet tolerate my own weight so I had to roll over to relieve myself on the floor. She came daily, for an hour or two. She washed me, fed me. She sang and sang.

  One day she instructed the guard to assist her. Together they held me upright and it was only then that I felt and properly understood the full weakness of my body. They held me there for only a few moments. The next day when she summoned the guard, again he came, and again they assisted me in standing up—for longer this time. Being made to stand recurred with each visit, along with the washing and the feeding, the singing. How did she get the guard to do this, help with her instinctive physical therapy?

  Eventually I began to stand unaided, each time for longer periods. Then I took a step or two, my feet dragging behind me across the floor. I ate more each day. I found I was able to sit upright by myself. Then I could stand unaided. I was putting on weight.

  * * *

  Oenone

  MY CHILD, WHEN I FIRST looked in upon this blind man, I was not sure he lived. But then a slight shiver, a shallow breath, a muscle twitch that occurred from some animal spirit of life, let me believe that he could be saved. Each rib pressed against the skin like a fallen animal on the plains and his eyes stared into his own vast night. I took his body and held it against my own. This is the first way, the beginning of how to return a person. As a mother holds a baby against her skin, I held this blind man and let him draw life back into his body from my own.

  Then I began to give him songs. They were the ancient ones, telling of how the land was made, how the great serpent comes out of the sky and carves riverbeds and mountains with his body until it rains and rains and he leaves because he becomes so wet he cannot warm himself. The rainwater fills the rivers and many plants grow. Then fish and birds arrive, so happy to have found this beautiful place. But soon they fight over the best plants to eat, and one of the birds eats one of the fish and they never trust one another again.

  Every time the rain stops the sun celebrates with a round circle of colours in the sky. Every colour has a place in the circle. The wild cats come down from the mountains and sing lovely songs in celebration of the circles of colours. A pack of wild dogs from another place are drawn to this singing. They come upon the cats and are so overwhelmed from the love they feel they try to capture the singing in their own mouths but in so doing they bite the cats’ throats. The cats refuse to ever sing again so as to not make the dogs act in this way, and now they only purr and meow in ugly ways. The dogs have forevermore hated the cats for withholding their songs and so they hunt them, believing they can still make them sing. Having begun all this, the sun no longer tempts the cats, and only celebrates the end of the rain with half a circle of colours.

  My child, these are the same ancient songs I’ve passed on to you. They are a part of this story. They are your story, they are part of everyone’s story who is from this country, whether from the South or the North.

  The story I tell is for you. I will give it over, from my lips to your small ears. I will tell it to you in the mornings as we eat fruit, and when as mother and daughter we wander down to the beach to collect smooth amber glass and seashell halves. I will sing it to you as you slip into sleep. I will tell it often, and in many different ways, until it becomes a part of you. This is the mother’s way of telling stories. This way is more permanent than writing, which may be lost or sold, or burned by others. This way will make sure that the story is in you, lives as you live. If you choose, you may change it as you like. You may give it away. To your own daughter when she is ready, or else you might just want to hold it close and keep it alive but private. This story is for you.

  In the last season of the war, we had journeyed here into the mountains to this village that overlooks the far coast. We were like the rolling, coloured pebbles on the beach after the tide has run out—suddenly here, suddenly exposed.

  I first heard of him, of Paris, when the whispering began.

  Oh, Mama Oenone, they would say. There is a forgotten blind man left in the jail!

  You make this up. How could this be? I ask.

  And they did not know. Just that it’s true, they would protest.

  Oh, child, these people were afraid. They had moved, and had been moved, all over the country, from a camp, to the city, to hideouts in the mountains. Mothers, sisters, fathers, or children were killed or lost to them. Their minds were not good—or so I thought. And they loved how these mouthfuls of gossip made their hearts beat faster and faster. They made up tales and told them to one another, and each time they grew in size. Their stories were dreams during the day; they were not about what they seemed. No, they were the night spirits overflowing, working their way out into the daylight any way they could.

  You see, their pain was a swollen river. It broke its banks frequently. It had to. There was so much of it. Oh, Oenone, the army is coming. Oh, Oenone, there is a fire raging on the other side of the mountains and we shall all be burned alive. Oh, Oenone, there is a blind man being kept in the jail.

  My child, you can see how they might not have been believed.

  I had brought many of these people here, to this village. For many years before the war they followed my husband, and then me. In a camp outside the capital, I had schemed as I waited. How could my people return to our town? They wanted to know when; they wanted to have hope. I preached patience. Those who believed followed me on our long journey when the time finally came. They stayed close to me for all that time out of loyalty, out of love, out of faith that when our moment arrived, we could return and make the past present once more.

  Others just arrived here in this village and we met for the first time. They had nowhere else to turn and just followed along. Still others arrived back here because this is where they are originally from. I know them from long ago, or knew their parents.

  * * *

  Paris

&nb
sp; THIS IS FOR YOU, DOCTOR Paris, Oenone said, holding out her hand and dropping a small tooth into my palm. This belonged to my son.

  I thanked her for the tooth, without yet knowing its significance; I did understand it to be an important gift she was giving me. I carefully tucked it in a crack in one of the walls. I knew each gap now as intimately as the lifelines on my palm, the scars on my body.

  I came to understand later, from Oenone as well as from others in the village, that her son was four years old when he died. A snake came and took him from her in the night. I imagine it was a viper. The custom is that a tooth is removed from the body and given to the grieving family—the dead not needing to eat in the spirit world. It is the ultimate gift, a physical remembrance of a dead loved one, in this place without easy access to ­photographs or film.

  To the spirit world went her son, from it I came to her. An unfair trade but one she accepted with total commitment and love from the first.

  I had been saved despite myself.

  * * *

  Oenone

  THIS IS MY ANCESTRAL VILLAGE. I lived here in these mountains until I was girl who began her bleeding. Then I was married and left with my husband for the town. He was charming. He could fix engines. As a young man he had plans. I was so in love with him it made me frightened with worry. He and I were in love as infants. We played together in the mountains surrounding this village. We found water holes, explored, trapped animals, collected plants. As we grew, it was assumed that we would always be together. I always understood that he would be the one I would marry, like we had pretended as children. So, when it happened just the way I had always expected, I felt lucky.

  He had already begun to change, even as we grew hair on our bodies, even as we learned what men and women do with one another. He was jealous and would thrash out at me if he suspected I had spoken to another boy in the village. His temper worsened and after we were married, when he announced that we would be going to the town so he could start a mechanical business and become rich, I agreed partly out of adventure, but also out of fear. What would he do to me if I said no? Could I even say no?

  For a while in the town our life was very interesting. His business kept him very busy. He befriended many men, far and wide, and they admired his confidence and his easy way of doing business. We made money by doing business with the oil company. Legitimate business. He taxied their people to and from the capital. He fixed their jeeps and trucks. I also worked with them as a servant, looking after their children. I learned how to speak to the women, the wives of the men who ran the oil company.

  When he announced that he was going to run for political office, I was pleased. His temper remained fierce and I thought that the scrutiny of public office would make him more cautious. It had the opposite effect. He grew arrogant and violent. Hitting me across the face, burning me with a cigarette end, accusing me of being the lover of one of the blind oil company men. I did not even know who he was speaking about.

  By this time I had given birth to a baby boy. With the child still feeding from my breast, I came across some papers in his mechanic’s garage that were plainly letters agreeing to services my husband would provide the oil company. They were unsigned on white paper and described how he would be given money and weapons to enlist men to help him protect the building of a pipeline.

  I trembled as I read.

  These letters, addressed to him as the regional member of government, boldly outlined my husband’s criminal activity, the bribes and profiteering, in such basic terms that anyone could understand. He was, obviously, afraid of no one. He believed he was unstoppable.

  The following Sunday he was due to speak to a group of town elders about government issues, but he asked me to cancel it as he had to go to the capital. I agreed, but I did not cancel it. Instead, I attended. I brought with me the letters and I addressed the group directly and without fear. There were a number of very good men in this gathering, including a religious man, the honest police inspector, and the editor of the newspaper. I read the letters. I announced I needed protection from my husband, that I was, as of this moment, no longer married to him.

  The entire town knew what had happened before he arrived back. I had gone into hiding, my dear friends providing for me in a room in the Colonial Hotel. The army came from the capital to maintain peace. He was thrown from office and before he was arrested he fled the town for the North. My heart heavy, I hoped to never see him again.

  The next election was sprung upon us due to the rising discontent in the North. I was pressed into running for office, the town desiring an end to oil company corruption. With my boy just one year old, I became the leader of the region—a position I held until the war broke out, until we abandoned the town for the capital, and then after it became unsafe, we were forced into the camps.

  Many of us from the camp stayed together. We waited out the war in the camp but it was a mean existence. Chaos, disease, disappearances. Controlled by the northern army, we could not return to the town; it was not safe; the time was not right. So, my idea grew, which was to escape the camp and head for this village. I made my case to those in my care. I spoke out one night in the camp. We stood, a collection of the lost and forgotten, around a fire lit in a drum, the women feeding babies and children playing at our feet in the dirt. Satellites tracked across the open night sky and an impatient truck horn sounded on and off, reaching us across the vast camp, interrupting the dreams of dogs feasting in their sleep.

  I know the way through the mountains, I said. I know where to escape if danger arrives. I know where there is a water spring between two rocks, where our boys can hunt small animals and birds. I know the way. If you have the strength, if you have in your hearts the love and trust for one another, we can go there together. We can wait there in secret, quietly, for the tide to change, for war to end, for the South to regain control, for liberation, for salvation, for peace.

  The walk was long and hard. We followed the dry riverbed though the southern mountains. After we finished the food we brought, we ate some berries and found water often enough, or we dug for it. Across the plains we were in full view and we travelled at night.

  The dangers were many. We woke to screaming. It was almost at dawn. A panther was upon us, still as death, waiting in the shadows. Huddled, we quietened down the one among us who had woken us in fright. We breathed as one. The minutes ticked by. The cat was still, ready to spring. Ready to take one of our children. Where were her hungry cubs? We waited. The sky was lightening by the minute. Long orange and pink streaks of sun rubbed against the horizon behind the cat. Crickets started up. We waited. I thought of my former husband. How he waited for the right time to pounce on our town, take over by force that which he could not by love. I saw him that morning when I went to the Colonial Hotel to help out my dear friends. I saw him pretending to sell leather. I did not know he was waiting to attack and capture foreigners for ransom. His handsome smile drew people to him. Although short, he looked and talked like the kind of man who is substantial. But he hides his real self and, although he smiles, he thinks many other things. He plots how he can charm you with his smile and then he uses you. He stood there selling leather for three days. Everyone in our town seeing him there, not speaking to him out of disgust, just waiting for him to leave or for me to throw him out of the town. But I would not speak to him! My pride said ignore him. He knew me, predicted I would do this. And from his leather stand, unopposed, unarmed, he orchestrated the invasion from the middle of our town.

  I stood and walked toward the cat. I clapped my hands loudly. Go! I said. Leave and go.

  * * *

  Paris

  WHAT WAS IN THE AIR? My daughter, I woke more fully, more definitively than I had in months. Low thrumming sounds drifted in and out of the cell, through the walls themselves, through the hole near the ceiling. She had been coming every day, having coaxed me back from death. There is no other way to
describe her treatment. It was a gentle and persistent lure. The songs and food, her touch and smell, reached into the murk of my consciousness, of my decision to surrender, and argued for a stay. Once she had a toehold, she’d pressed the issue. She sang and sang, she fed, and somehow I was not gone yet. An idea of me still existed and was brought back to lead the rest of me out of oblivion.

  Where was she that day? Now I could sit on my own, now I could stand with some help and take several steps. I was eager to impress her. Each stutter of a step I took gave her pleasure and I wanted to perform this act again now. I was ready for her, but she did not come. Instead, as I lay on the floor with my head resting on my arm, I could feel the sound in the earth, entering through every surface, molecules vibrating with a new energy.

  Was she safe? Suddenly I became frightened for her. I called out for the guard, something I had never done before. I called the one who had been helping me stand, who took his orders not from his commander, but from Oenone. Hold his arm. Now lift. Set him down. Be sure to catch him if he falls. These were the instructions, some of which I understood by their context, others because I knew some words. And she would give me snatches of instruction in English too. Put weight on your foot now. Press up. That’s enough for today.

  No guard came. I listened harder at the door. Called again, this time much weaker. I did not know if there were other prisoners still in the jail. I had always been aware of life on the other side of my walls. It is something you just begin to feel, my daughter. But I did not have the sensation that there was a man, any men—angry, hurt, hungry, masturbating, or insane—close by now. Why am I alone in the jail? I was healthier than I had been in months. My mind was clear and working in full. So I waited. I lay on the ground and waited for Oenone, feeling for the vibrations, reading the change that moved in the air. Whatever the change was, it was connected to her absence. I was sure of that. She would come. She would come because I needed her to, because I believed, suddenly, my face against the dirt, that she needed me too and that by saving my life in the manner she had, she was bound to me.