I grab the boy by the arm, hauling him out of the hut and exposing him to the fresh air. Reviving after a few minutes, his breathing heavy and the experience inside the hut now behind us, he rises and then runs off in a mad dash toward the line of men with buckets.
Not eager to explain myself or my actions, horrified at what might have happened in the hut, at what I had allowed to happen in Canada and why, I enter the boat and begin rowing against the current, in the upstream direction I believe to be that of Archidona, with more strength, intensity and focus than ever before.
21
As the sun rises over the river the following morning, having rowed through the night past bridges, tree outlines and huts that I recognized onshore, I am in awe of the splendour of this place. I see another elongated boat motoring in the distance. On board is our former guide, and Karen.
As the boat comes alongside my own, Karen jumps into the front, nearly toppling it over. The other man turns his boat around and motors away. Karen and I are suddenly left alone.
“Where have you been?” she asks angrily.
“I don’t know,” I say, my voice hoarse. “What are you doing out here?”
“I’ve been looking for you since you left. I’d nearly given up hope. I thought you’d gone mad, seeing your door wide open, and those paintings in the hut; the hut owner showed them to me, dozens of pictures painted all over the floors and the walls and the furniture, all of the same girl with clubbed feet and a small head with a flat face. To say that I was shocked, disgusted and extremely worried would only be—well, in fact, after seeing those images, I thought I’d never see you again.”
“I want to travel with you,” I say. “To see more of the world, to experience more than I’ve ever known.”
She smiles after a time, and then, before we arrive on shore, she says: “The next bus will be through here tomorrow morning. The protests are long over. We have been here far too long.”
22
As we travel to Quito on the morning bus, there are fires dissipating over the horizon. The fires of pacified protest. Nothing, other than this, has changed. Karen understands, without explanation, that I am going back to Manta, and not to Venezuela with her.
She leaves me an open-ended ticket she purchased for Margarita Island.
“In case you change your mind,” she says, a grin on her face as she climbs aboard the bus for the airport. I call her name, and she turns around to face me.
“If not,” she says, “the Señora will take good care of you. She will. Just promise me that if you’re not coming to Venezuela, you’ll go straight to Manta.”
“I will,” I say, taking her hand. “I want you to come back, soon. I want to help raise your child.”
She seems confused, but still squeezes my hand as if to assure me that we will do so, together.
“I’ll be back soon. This is something I have to do.”
∞
Back in Manta, there seems to be a certain solemnity about the place. Inés and Yolanda are not there. The Señora tells me she is lonely. Her daughters have gone to Quito to see about their visas that will allow them to be with their father in New York.
“Karen, she will not be back,” the Señora says to me in Spanish, “Unless it is many years from now. She is pregnant from a man who once lived here. Now he lives in Venezuela.
“Yes, she told me,” I say, to which she appears surprised.
The Señora demands I clean every bit of paint from the walls, ceiling and furniture of my old apartment, where I have painted additional renditions of Annabelle. After I do, she hands me another key. It is the key to Karen’s apartment.
“You can live there for as long as you want,” the Señora says. “I told the Señorita, Karen, that your father lived in the apartment beside hers. There is a door connecting them both. You can have them both, there is no one in either. No one to rent. She suggested that you live there now. But no more painting.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I understand, and I won’t be painting anymore.”
“I will be going soon to Quito, to be with my daughters and to see about a visa for New York, for myself. You will go to Venezuela to visit Karen, and to see her baby?”
“I have the sense that she will be back here,” I reply, “and much sooner than you think.”
∞
The Señora asks me a few days later, in an informal proposition, whether I am interested in marrying one of her daughters and moving to New York. I reply that, although her daughters are very beautiful, I won’t. I will be travelling, a short while after her return, with Karen and her child.
I carry my few possessions from my old apartment, and turn the key to the lock on my father’s door. Inside, the place is the same as mine. The only difference seems to be that the roof is accessible from a pull-down ladder hidden over the kitchen, a ladder I have never seen before.
As I sit on the roof later that night smoking unfiltered tobacco, I see a spectacular array of stars. The night is cold, and the beach seems somewhat illuminated by the intensity of the stars. I can see the spot where my father is buried, and the small cross protruding from the sand....
Tomorrow, I will go down to the beach and introduce myself to the family living on the boat with the stilts, the boat that now appears as though it is floating on the water. I will not explain to them that I have intentionally littered the bay with my paintings, throwing them in the mud. I will have conversations with them about anything else. I will swim with them at the beach nearby, while watching as the tide rolls in and my paintings are washed out to sea.
I spend a few minutes writing out an alternate ending to my recurring dream.
As I fall asleep there on the roof, I again sense Yelena in the closet. I open the closet door to reveal that she is inside. She is holding Annabelle, who is asleep. Both of them are dressed in blue. “Take her,” Yelena says upon seeing me, and I do. I hold Annabelle close, caressing her skin before kissing her forehead. I smell the sweetness of her skin, and I carefully remove her from the closet. I fall asleep in the dream, holding Annabelle in my arms.
The next evening I begin intentionally depriving myself of sleep, knowing that my recurring dream is over and that I will never again approach that same sensation, that same moment of overwhelming bliss, and because of that my reality, with the memory of that moment, is preferable to dreams; but I stay awake, drinking instant coffee and smoking a filterless cigarette, with the understanding that you can escape your dreams, but never for long.
Other Quattro Fiction
A Certain Grace by Binnie Brennan
Life Without by Ken Klonsky
Romancing the Buzzard by Leah Murray
The Lebanese Dishwasher by Sonia Saikaley
Against God by Patrick Senécal
The Ballad of Martin B. by Michael Mirolla
Mahler’s Lament by Deborah Kirshner
Surrender by Peter Learn
Constance, Across by Richard Cumyn
In the Mind’s Eye by Barbara Ponomareff
The Panic Button by Koom Kankesan
Shrinking Violets by Heidi Greco
Grace by Vanessa Smith
Break Me by Tom Reynolds
Retina Green by Reinhard Filter
Gaze by Keith Cadieux
Tobacco Wars by Paul Seesequasis
The Sea by Amela Marin
Real Gone by Jim Christy
A Gardener on the Moon by Carole Giangrande
Good Evening, Central Laundromat by Jason Heroux
Of All the Ways To Die by Brenda Niskala
The Cousin by John Calabro
Harbour View by Binnie Brennan
The Extraordinary Event of Pia H. by Nicola Vulpe
A Pleasant Vertigo by Egidio Coccimiglio
Wit in
Love by Sky Gilbert
The Adventures of Micah Mushmelon by Michael Wex
Room Tone by Zoë Garnett
The Abundance of the Infinite Page 9