by Paul Lynch
Bolivar leaps up and slaps his hands together. A grin wrinkles his eyes.
Look, he says. Today will be the greatest Christmas ever. We will prepare a feast. There will be all the usual things and some special things also. You will see. You know the story about the three shepherds? Wait till you hear my version. It is the funniest thing ever.
Then Bolivar produces something from under the stern seat. He says, I made this for you. Hector stares at a face scratched into driftwood. The eyes crinkled in laughter. The mouth a wide grin.
Hector stands looking at the wooden face and then he holds it to his chest.
It is perfect, he says.
Then his face falls and takes on a sorrowful look.
I did not make you anything.
* * *
Bolivar pours double rations of water. He presents fresh barnacles, then strips of sun-dried tuna and strips of a young mahi-mahi caught two days before. He waves his hand over some shark meat that is beginning to smell. Pinch your nose, he says, and you can pretend it is something else. Bolivar rubs his hands then eats with abandon, his eyes closed, his tongue slapping about his mouth. Hector slowly chews the food. He eats with his eyes squeezed as though concentrating all his attention upon it.
They sing some songs they both know and Bolivar tells some stories, this thing that happened to me one time, you will not believe it.
Later, Hector points at Bolivar’s arm. That faded tattoo, he says. Is it a woman’s name?
Bolivar studies for a moment the bleached green tattoo on his forearm as though he has not noticed it for a long time. He runs an index finger along the skin then shrugs.
He says, it is the name of a woman, that is all.
Hector says, who is she? What happened to her?
Bolivar leans forward and laughs.
Nothing happened to her. She is the mother of my daughter. Maybe that is what happened to her.
You have a child?
It is then that Bolivar stops smiling.
He says, I do. Or maybe I did. I don’t know any more which one it is. I did have a daughter. Maybe I still do. Either way, she does not know me. I guess that means I no longer have a child. Maybe it is the case that I have a daughter but she doesn’t have a father. Yes, that is probably it.
Bolivar reads from Hector’s expression a question arising from the risen brows, the way he leans slightly forward with an open mouth.
Bolivar puts up the flat of his hand.
Look, man. I don’t like where this conversation is going. It gives me a pain in the head.
* * *
That was the best day yet, Hector says. He is making himself comfortable within the cooler, trying to stretch an arm out, wriggle a shoulder. Bolivar blankets seaweed up to his neck. Then Hector goes to speak but stops, Bolivar sensing still within the youth the unspoken question. You should have said nothing, he thinks. It is none of his business. Do not tell him a thing.
Then Hector says, Lucrezia – I wonder what she is doing. If she is thinking about me. Maybe she is, maybe she is not. Probably now she is with him.
With who?
This other guy. I keep thinking she is with him while I am stuck here. I cannot stop these thoughts. All the time I have them. She is hard work, let me tell you. Truthfully, I do not know if I even like her all that much. I like it when I am with her but then I forget about her when she is not around. Tell me, why is that? Why am I like this? Tell me, is it normal for a girl not to want to fool around? Sometimes I think I will go crazy. She never lets me into her bedroom. We sit and watch TV and whenever I try and do something she slaps my hands away. She never lets me do a single thing. She says she is not ready. She says it is a sin. She says she is having her period. She says all sorts of things. Sometimes I really think I am going to go crazy. I dream about it all the time. What it would be like even though my body now is not interested. She keeps telling me, wait, you must wait, Hector. But wait for what? I would like to know. Sometimes I think she is lying. There is this guy, Octavio. He is four years older than me. I see him around. He is a welder or something. I saw him leaving her house one time when her parents were out. I ask her, what was he doing here? And she says, he was dropping something off for my brother. But this guy and her brother hardly know each other. It does not make sense. Another time I see them in the car together. Octavio’s car. I do nothing for days but I imagine his hands all over her. She is letting him do these things. I say to her, I am done with you, I know what you are. But she pulls a shocked face, says to me, he was only giving me a lift to my nan’s. It is not my fault you have a sick mind. Maybe we should not see each other any more. Then I go crazy and want to see her even more. She has an answer for everything.
Bolivar is silent a moment. Then he says, I don’t know, Hector. Maybe you need to be careful. If you ask me, the river sounds because it is carrying water. Do you know what I mean? Women are tricky, but so are men. If you ask me, we are as useless as each other.
Hector says, I would love to tell her, you made us wait too long and now it is too late. This is what you have done. At least I could have taken that with me. I could have known what it was like.
* * *
They lie in the cooler shiftless and awake. Then Bolivar sighs and begins to speak.
Look, I did not always live on the strip. I had another life before this one. And yes, I had a little girl. But that is all there is to it.
He stops speaking, sits within an inward gaze that travels to where he used to live.
He opens his eyes and stares at the moon trembling upon the water.
He tries not to think.
He thinks, do not tell him anything.
He says, look. I come from some other place. But I do not want to talk about it. I used to think about this place where I come from all the time but then I began to forget. It is easier like this. You can teach yourself to do it. Every man has the right to change his life. It is not unusual. Sometimes it is for the best. Yes. I was married once. Maybe I still am. Maybe I am not. Who knows. Maybe that little bishop who looked like he’d been struck by lightning dissolved the marriage. Or maybe she thinks I am dead and she married someone else, she is now a bigamist, who is to know. For sure she will think I am dead if ever she hears about this. It hurts me to think about it. Yes, I have a daughter. I left her. No, that is not it. I had to go away. Yes. I had to leave her. It was a choice I had to make, one thing or another. Anyhow, she is called Alexa. I named her myself. I named her because when I first saw her, she looked like an Alexa. It is hard to explain this feeling. You cannot know it until you hold your own child.
He reaches out his hand in the dark.
She was this high when I left her.
Where is she now? Why did you leave?
Do not ask me so many questions. I am tired. It is the middle of the night. It has been a long day. The best Christmas ever. Look, I do not know all the answers. You do some things in your life. That is all I know.
* * *
Bolivar is almost asleep when Hector’s voice reaches in the dark.
She is with him. She is with him for sure.
Bolivar clears his voice and says, how can you be sure?
She will be delighted I am gone.
Look. You cannot know anything. What can you know out here? Nothing. It is impossible. Let me tell you, it will be a big deal to many, many people that you were washed out to sea. For me, not so many people will care. But for you, let me tell you, your people will be praying for weeks and weeks. It will never end. There will be novenas and endless visits and she will be among them praying. She will be kneeling before her bed with her hands clasped pleading with God every night. She will be wishing she had done all those things with you. She will be asking God’s permission to do all those things if you return. And if she has done you any wrong, she will be drowning in guilt. She will blame herself. She will think you are innocent. She will dump that guy in an instant. That is how these things go. I have seen it myself many time
s.
He will be able to do what he likes with her now.
You need to stop this. You will drive yourself crazy. Here, eat some of this fish.
Hector is silent, then sighs.
Maybe you are right, Bolivar. You are such a good friend.
* * *
They watch the sun slide into the sea, a container ship ghosting within it.
* * *
Bolivar does not notice and then he does. He has stopped telling time by the sun. His mind falling into slowness. Time now is not time. It does not pass but rests. This is what he thinks. The days now passing within an arresting of time. Or sometimes he thinks time is passing without him, passing overhead or around him or underneath but not within. He tries to reason it out, how it is like some enormous thing, something unaccountable to all thought, action or utterance. You have been cut off from its passing and yet it continues and always will. He studies Hector to see if this could be true for him also.
Then come days when he meets a soaring happiness. A feeling from within of possibility and freedom. It is summoned by each burning dawn, the world from ashes coming to be again. They watch the earth remake itself in splendours of colour and grow quiet in astonishment. How it seems such skies have never been witnessed. A stillness growing between Bolivar and Hector that is also an understanding. Each man beginning to see the truth of the other, that each is as helpless within the truth of all this. That what a man carries in his heart has no consequence within such vastness. And yet the heart bloods the wish. Hector always watching the sea. Each glittering of light a possible sighting. But more and more often now Bolivar rests his eyes. He speaks to himself the feeling that it could always be like this. What need is there of much else? You eat and you sleep and you do simple tasks. Now we are truly alive.
* * *
Hector says, I dreamed last night I was home in my bed. In the dream it was morning and it was time to get up. But when I left my room I saw that the house was empty. It had been empty for a long time – my parents gone, my brother and sister gone, a layer of dust upon everything. In the dream they had been dead for many years and it happened while I was gone. I walked through the empty house. Then I woke. What do you think this dream means? I am afraid that something is wrong back home.
Bolivar says, I keep having a dream where I am burying dead bodies. I am in the hills behind the town where I used to live before I went to the coast. In the dream I am measuring the size of a grave. I do this by lying on the ground and marking out around my body with a stick. I think I understand the meaning of this dream. But when I wake and look at the sea I can see that my own size is nothing within it, that no size can be marked upon the ocean nor recognised.
Hector says, that sounds to me like a stupid dream.
* * *
Bolivar’s sleeping body senses the changing weather. He wakes alone in the cooler. Schlik schlik. Schlik schlik. He leans out to see Hector a shadowed thing bent to the hull. Bolivar studies the youth a moment, then climbs out muttering under his breath. He watches the gloom that hangs over the world. The sea become lead.
He takes from under the stern seat the plastic bags harvested from the sea. He smooths them out and cuts them carefully with the knife into strips. Then he braids the strips into rope. He frees some fish gut from the ball of debris and knots the gut and the braided rope together, cuts a hole in the sheeting and runs the rope beyond it. Then he secures this rope around the cooler and knots it.
Hey, he shouts. Look at this.
Hector looks up and sees Bolivar flapping a doorway.
* * *
They shudder through some endless squall. Days like nights of ancient rain. Bolivar trying to keep hold of the doorway as the downpour rushes in. They are damp through and huddle under a seaweed blanket, their teeth clacking, their skin grey and wrinkled. Hector with the Virgin idol in his lap. He grows quiet, has been shiftless and awake most of the night. Each time he moves he nudges Bolivar in the ribs. He switches his legs, recrosses his arms, wraps them about his chest. A wheeze now sits at the edge of his breath. Then he grows motionless, spends a day staring bird-eyed at the sheet as though trying to see through it. He begins to whisper something unintelligible. He whispers it over and over until Bolivar shouts at him to stop.
Then Hector speaks it aloud.
I know what she is doing.
Bolivar leans closer. Who?
Lucrezia. She is with him.
With who?
Octavio.
Bolivar lets out a long sigh. Then he squeezes his hands.
Look, he says. You need to stop this. It is impossible to know what she is doing. We are as good as blind out here.
No. It is simple to work out.
How?
Today is a Saturday.
How is it a Saturday? Out here, there are no days of the week.
I have been keeping track of the days. Today is a Saturday, for sure. Do not ask me how I know this. It is the afternoon. This is the time she would be with me. We would be watching a game show or something stupid on TV. One of her soaps. But now I am here and he is there.
But how can you know?
It is easy, Bolivar. Her parents do the shopping at this time. She has nothing else to do. So she watches TV. But she has this weird thing – she cannot watch TV on her own. She likes to do it with somebody else. So she will invite him over. He will park his car farther down the street. It is simple to work out. He will come into the house and he will watch TV with her. But he will not do this for long. He will sit and pick at the frills on the arm rest. He will pick at the dog hairs and let them fall onto the carpet. Then he will say to her, let’s go to your room. And she will say, let me watch the end of this. He will wait, then he will say again, it is over now, let’s go. She will take a look at the front door and be silent a moment listening for their car. He will say, they are not due back for some time. She will look at Octavio’s face, look at his hands, and she will think what it would be like to have those hands all over her. That is when she will take him to her room. They are there now.
Bolivar is studying Hector as he speaks. Even in this dim light he can see how the eyes dream outward in agony. How the eyes seem to project onto the sheet what the mind sees inward.
What the mind believes.
He shakes the youth’s arm.
It cannot be true, he says. There is no way of knowing.
Hector pushes Bolivar back with the flat of his hand.
Do not tell me what is true or not.
Here, eat some food.
I am not hungry.
Bolivar begins to shake his head. Then he climbs out to check the rain cups. They are near full. He pours the water into the container then stands a moment squeezing his fists. When he returns he is still vexed.
Look, he says. They are still thinking about you back home. Every day now they are praying for your return. I can assure you, she is too. You need to think about this. You need to think healthy thoughts. You are not looking so well. Listen to your breath. You need nourishment. Here. Eat a piece of this.
Hector does not answer but continues to stare at the sheet.
After some time, he speaks in a remote voice.
She is doing things to him.
* * *
Bolivar climbs outside and checks the cups, feels the warm air on his skin. The world in earliest light. It is often like this, a molten slow-pouring of colour. A feeling of time as though the world were coming into being. He stretches his arms and legs and listens to the sea, comes to believe he can hear something whispered from long ago. He is thinking all the time of Alexa. How she moves inside him as a shadowed being. Who she might be now in the world. He turns and quietly studies Hector curled in the cooler like a child. A hand resting against the mouth. He bends to study the face. His eyes travelling the forked brow, the eyelids flickering at some dream.
An older voice within him asks, what is the meaning of Hector?
Day after day he is meeting such thoughts
that are strange to him. It is always an older voice that speaks.
He thinks, he is somebody’s child.
* * *
For days, he watches the youth, not the spindled arms and legs, not his sulky demeanour. But something within the youth he is trying to see. An essence, perhaps. A sign of the life force within. The living will, he thinks, that meets the living will of others. He can see Hector moving among his people. His words spoken, the simple gestures. A nod of the head, a smile, a wince, a shrug of indifference. A going forward to do this thing or that, or a not-doing, a refusing, a sitting among them, just being in the same room. The will in meeting with the will of others, each action or non-action a bond with his people.
This is the source of his meaning, he thinks. The life force that is the will unwatched, unnoticed, unquestioned. The will in the world.
But his will is out here.
The will has seen itself.
He is not sure if he understands this or what it might mean.
Then he shakes his head.
Why can he not have meaning out here?
Bolivar begins to see his own life. How he was once a part of this living will among others.
He thinks of how he removed himself from his family, his daughter, all the people he knew, put an absence in the place of his being.
He thinks, you took yourself away from your meaning.
Alexa’s eyes. He can see them watching the space where he used to be.
For the first time he begins to feel grief for his child.
He can feel the grief she will carry inside her all her life. His mother and his father watching the space he once inhabited.
He closes his eyes and thinks, what is it I have done? Maybe it is not too late to do something.
A single word resounding in his mind.