Tortuga

by Rudolfo Anaya

  “We’ve been through this before,” Mike said, “what’s the best medicine. As far as Ronco is concerned it’s warm snatch, period.”

  “Right,” Ronco nodded.

  “So what else is new?” Sadsack groaned.

  “Nothing. Let’s go eat,” Ronco suggested.

  “Too early.”

  “Let’s go for a swim at the pool then.”

  “They won’t let us in this early,” Sadsack complained.

  “That’s what I like about you, Sad, you got the power of positive thinking. It’s more fun to lie around and feel sorry for yourself, huh?”

  “It’s easy for you to talk,” Sadsack scowled, “you’d mount anything! You don’t have to live with people when you get out!”

  “Hey, my old man’s people,” Ronco smiled.

  “Ronco’s dad has a cabin up in the Black Range,” Mike explained, “to the south of here. He says it’s the most beautiful mountain in the world. And Ronco’s been let out a couple of times to visit, cause it’s close.”

  “Cause he’s getting too old for this place!” Sadsack snapped.

  “It’s a beautiful mountain range,” Ronco said, “it’s not barren like the mountains around here. It’s green, and in the summer when the sun comes up it sparkles on the dew like diamonds. At night the moon is so big you swear you could reach out and touch it. My old man says he’s a rich man to have all that around him, of course the winters are tough, but in the summer it’s like being in heaven. We sit on the porch all day, drink cold beer, and my old man plays a banjo he picked up in a card game, and when we get tired of sittin’ around we jump in the jeep and head down for El Rito where we buy some booze, find us a couple of hot mamas and throw a party! Chingao, that’s living! When I was there last summer we drank a case of whiskey, slept with every mamasota in town, started a fight in the bar and raised more hell than two mad bulls! My old man got half his ear cut off and I broke my arm, but damn! We showed them we could fight! It was worth it, cause we didn’t start it. A couple of redneck cowboys started saying I should be home quilting and not drinking in a bar with men, cause I was still in my chair. But we showed them! And when we was broke and tired and the mamasotas who took care of us started talking about marriage we crawled back up the mountain and slept for a week. Damn, that’s life!”

  “You live like animals,” Sadsack said. He sucked air and farted.

  “Maybe,” Ronco smiled, “but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. We’re not out to hurt anyone. We accept the world as it is.”

  “Yeah, maybe you’re lucky,” Sadsack muttered. “It sure as hell ain’t that way when I visit at home. The last time I went home for a visit my old man was having a party for his clients. It was a con game. They brought a bunch of people from the east and were going to sell them some lots they had subdivided out in the middle of the goddamned desert! Anyway, he didn’t want me around. Told me to stay outta the way, acted like getting polio was a sin! The sonofabitch. I stole a bottle and started drinking in my room, and the drunker I got, the madder I got until I pushed myself right into the middle of the party and started shaking hands with everybody. I was wearing only my shorts, and you should’ve seen their faces when I said, ‘Hi ya folks, Sadsack here.’ I went around and shook their hands and that scared the shit outta them. They began making excuses and heading out. My ole man screamed his head off. ‘You ruined my deal!’ he cried, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Why can’t you stay out of trouble like your brother! Look at you! Just look at you—’”

  Sadsack shook his head slowly. “Damn, how could I tell him that I have looked at myself, a million times I’ve looked at myself in the mirror and cursed myself for being deformed and ugly. A million times I’ve asked: why me?”

  He thought to himself for awhile then said, “Getting polio was something I never dreamed of. Shit, when I was in high school I was flying high. I could’ve played college basketball after I graduated, I was that good. Every college in the state wanted me … and then what happened? I was walking down the street one day, and I turned to look at my reflection in a store window, and I saw myself falling down … I began screaming, because I was falling and I couldn’t hold myself up … and that’s all I remember. It was as if the image in the glass had broken into a thousand pieces—” He turned and looked at us. “But why me?” he asked.

  “Because some little beasties got loose in God’s experimental laboratory,” Ronco said half-heartedly.

  “My parents think it’s something they did,” Sadsack said, “they think they’re being punished for their sins—now they drink a lot—”

  “Ah, damn, what a way to start a morning—”

  “Yeah,” Ronco said, “it’s depressing. Come on, let’s go eat.”

  “Too early—”

  “What about Tortuga? He never mentions his family.”

  “You got a family, Tortuga?” Ronco asked.

  “Yeah,” I answered. I thought about my mother. She would be waiting for me.

  “Tortuga’s not planning on any outside help to make him well, he’s working at it on his own,” Mike said. “He works out every morning.”

  “He wants outta here bad,” Ronco said.

  “That’s rule number one, Mike’s rule: get out.” He jumped into his chair and pushed himself to my bedside. “You do want out of here bad, huh Tortuga?” I thought about going home, crippled like Ronco or Sadsack. It would be rough, but it was the only thing I wanted. “You’ll make it,” Mike nodded, then he spun his chair around and raced into the hall with Ronco on his tracks. Sadsack slowly climbed into his chair and followed them. At the door he bumped into old man Maloney.

  “Watch where you’re goin’ you little punk!” the old man growled. “You little bastards think you own the world,” he mumbled as he came into the room. He came in every morning before breakfast to collect the urinals and bedpans. He usually stayed long enough to run a cold wash cloth over my face and to help me with my breakfast tray. He mumbled and cursed as he tossed things about, working his false teeth back and forth in his mouth, peering down at me through extra thick glasses and pausing from time to time to scratch the flaking dandruff on his thick, white eyebrows. When he was through cleaning up the urinals he set my tray on my nightstand and stuffed lumpy, cold oatmeal and dry toast into my mouth. “Least you’re not trouble, not yet,” he mumbled as he helped me eat, “but you’ll get goin’, like them, and you’ll be a pain in the ass, I can tell, just a pain in the ass—” He made me wash the oatmeal down with orange juice then he grunted, cleared the tray and moved on, collecting bedpans and cussing the kids that used them at night, helping to feed those who needed help.

  After breakfast there was a lull in the ward. The kids who could make it to the dining room usually went on to therapy or swimming. Some went to arts and crafts classes, classes which were supposed to teach them to do something useful for when they were released. Once a week the doctors visited the ward, but even they went quietly about their rounds, creating ripples in the monotony of our lives only when they announced a release or when someone was ready to get off the bed and get walking braces, crutches or a wheelchair. Those times were important, because they meant whoever could get up acquired a certain amount of freedom and they were milestones in the long process of complete freedom.

  In the quietness of the morning I could hear Franco singing in his room. His sad words floated down the hall and mixed into the sounds of morning.

  And I don’t think

  I can go on

  Cause it keeps right on a’hurtin’

  Since you used your surgery knife

  Since you cut into my life.…

  7

  On clear mornings the sun warmed our room. The ward was very quiet after breakfast. Jerry sat on his bed and braided beads into belts and pouches. I exercised then slept. I had a lot of time to think, and most of my thoughts centered around the vegetables in Salomón’s ward. It had been a depressing place to visit. I wondered how long S
alomón had been in the hospital, and why had I seen him in my dream before I knew him? Now, when I listened very carefully, I could hear his stories as they made their way up and down the ward. Salomón had sent me a stack of books, and I began to read some of the stories and poems which he liked, but reading reminded me of him and the eternity he would spend doing nothing but reading and sometimes in a rage I would toss the books away and release my energy in doing whatever exercises I could do by myself. But more and more I returned to them and read, and in them I explored a new kind of freedom, a freedom which didn’t have anything to do with the movement of my muscles and nerves. The words struck chords and a remembrance of things past would flood over me and in my imagination I would live in other times and other places …

  The words are like the wind, Tortuga, they sweep us up from this time and place and allow us to fly like butterflies to other places … When we think we are not of this time then we encounter absolute freedom, because we have created another universe, that’s how powerful our imagination is. But wait, suppose it’s not our thought that moves us. Suppose we are the very characters we invent in our fantasies? Then we have no freedom. Then we are only another group of stock characters in a crazy writer’s notebook … then even the words cannot free us, even they are a trap. Then we must keep very still, not breathe, not think with words, not create disturbances or ripples, lie like my poor vegetables thinking without words, thinking about silence and the silent hum which is the rhythm of the earth, thinking silence until we think ourselves out of existence … then, that is freedom. Then we are characters who are not yet born! I think I like that better. Yes, I like it much better! For if we are not, then we can become, and we will become what you sing of us, Tortuga! How do you like that, Tortuga? Isn’t that great! To become what you will make us in your songs!

  Then he laughed and his laughter echoed down the ward. I found myself laughing with him, laughing insanely because he twisted my mind with his crazy thoughts then released me to think my own. His laughter was like the whistle of humming birds. When I heard it I turned to see if Jerry had heard it, and although Jerry said nothing I knew he did hear the laughter which shook us from our loneliness.

  Sometimes I talked to Jerry when we were alone. I told him Salomón’s stories and about the things I found in Salomón’s books. He never spoke, but he listened. I thought he was tired of words, because he had been double-crossed by words. At the first thaw the false sounds had gone splintering to the ground, like icicles. They had taken his speech away. Now there was nothing to share except the whispers of butterflies, and so that’s how we spoke, without promises.

  The most important thing to look forward to in the mornings was the arrival of Ismelda and Josefa. They came to clean the rooms and make the beds. They were both working our ward regularly and so I got to see them every morning. I waited eagerly for them. They were my only contact to the outside world, a world which seemed to exist only in the accounts they gave of it. And Ismelda had become a strong link between my dreams and the mountain and what happened to me. Somehow she was always near me. She had been there to greet me the day I arrived, and she had been there when Mike found me. Most important, she was in my dreams. Every day as I recovered more movement in my legs the fire seemed fanned by that first meeting in the mountain’s lake. She was a woman who haunted me, and although I could not tell her, I had fallen in love with her.

  “Hey, Tortuga, how are you?” Josefa shouted when they entered the room, “look what Ismelda brought you, some real food! Not that hospital garbage which makes you skinny and pale!” Ismelda always brought me food she cooked at home. The smell of red chile with meat and beans and fried potatoes filled the room. I looked at Ismelda and she smiled. She was a handsome woman. She had dark features, with a smile that turned my night to day. Her dark eyes flashed with the fire of life.

  “And you, Jerry, how you doin’ this morning? Well, huh?” Josefa asked Jerry as she laid down her bucket and mop. She loved to take care of us. We were her kids. Every day she asked us how we were feeling and when she found one of us sick or in the dumps she appeared the next day with a remedy from home. And her herbs and purgatives and food worked, because we felt better when she tended to us.

  “It’s the food,” she muttered, “it’s what they give you to eat that makes you sick. You gotta eat food from home, that makes you well!” And she fixed mutton and red chile for Jerry and me and we had it for lunch.

  “How do you feel?” Ismelda asked as she changed the pillow cases.

  “I feel good,” I answered, then daring I whispered, “when I see you in my dreams you have green eyes—”

  She smiled. “When I see you in my dreams you’re a lizard,” she answered. Then she explained. “My mother was living here in this valley when my father, a wandering gypsy, came one day. They fell in love, and I was born. He had green eyes; it’s only in the dark that mine turn green,” she laughed. I fell in love with the sound of her voice and her gentle touch. I looked into her eyes and saw the woman of my dreams. I wanted to ask her more, to hear her speak, but she turned to do her work. Usually it was Josefa who did the talking. She was a round, energetic woman who loved to tell stories.

  Josepha was the real nurse for the ward. She loved to do things right and to keep the rooms clean. The Nurse took credit for our good health and tabulated our bm’s with delight, but it was Josefa we turned to when we didn’t feel well. Her only failure was Danny, but Danny was everybody’s failure. The withering which had started in his fingers had now spread to his hand. The doctors couldn’t do anything for it. Perhaps Josefa would have been able to help, but Danny never went to her. For some strange reason he stayed clear of her.

  “Did you sleep well?” she asked me. “Good dreams, huh?” she winked and looked at Ismelda. She knew Ismelda filled my dreams. “And what did they feed you this morning? Oatmeal? Yuk! They want to give you empache the way they fix it—and look at you, Tortuga! Did old man Maloney make this mess? Look, there’s oatmeal all over your face, and you haven’t been washed in a week! Ismelda, bring a basin of hot water, and plenty of soap. We gonna wash the turtle. I won’t have any of my boys running around dirty like that!” She pulled aside the sheets and sniffed. “Pee-you, Tortuga! You stink! When’s the last time you had a bath? Doesn’t that old man know he’s supposed to give you a bath every day? Doesn’t that Nurse check anything except for bm’s?” She pulled off the sheet and left me naked on the bed. “Scrub him good!” she said to Ismelda. “I wanna see a pink turtle. Turtles aren’t supposed to be afraid of water!” she roared with laughter. “You scrub him and I’ll wash the floors,” she nudged Ismelda, and Ismelda dipped the wash cloth into the warm, sudsy water and washed my face.

  She worked in silence. Her firm strokes wiped away the grime which had accumulated. She scrubbed my arms until they tingled, then she washed my legs. Her touch sent hot fire rushing through my veins. I tried to speak but my throat was tight with the strange excitement of her touch. I closed my eyes and breathed deep, and I thought of the woman who had kissed me in my dreams. Ismelda teased me with her gentle hands. Under her care I wasn’t the terrible turtle-man of the kids’ rumors, I was a vulnerable, crippled turtle turned on his back. As she wiped me I could hear the soft jangling of her seven silver bracelets, and I could smell the clean, wild perfume of her body, an aroma that hinted of home odors and goat fragrances.

  My body throbbed and grew under her soft, warm touch.

  My flesh tingled.

  In the warm sunlight I turned belly-up and dreamed of the woman who had led me into the mountain and who sang on a sea conch shell …

  I felt her love smother me, and I wanted to cry for joy …

  Then Josefa shouted and woke me from my dreams. I opened my eyes and she winked at me. “Look what a nice staff that turtle has! Perfect for working goats, huh, or for climbing in the mountains—”

  Ismelda blushed but said nothing. She pulled the clean sheet over me and finished drying me.
She took the dirty water away and when Josefa had finished washing the floors they sat and had coffee with us. Our room was their halfway point and they often had their morning rest here. Josefa brought sweet cakes, raisin bread or cinnamon covered biscochitos to share with everyone. She flavored her coffee with cinnamon and it was warm and sweet. She always told stories about the people and the land; today she talked about the village at the foot of the hill.

  “—This village has been here as long as anyone can remember. It was a winter camp for the Indians, long ago, before the mangas largas came, before the sickness came … The Indians came to the warm baths, it was a part of their religion, and they planted prayer sticks in the caves and springs along the foot of the mountain …” She rocked her body and motioned toward Tortuga. “According to old stories I’ve heard, the people rested here on their migrations. This was a place they settled before they were told to go farther north … but who knows. On this desert time doesn’t mean anything. It could have happened yesterday, or a year ago, or centuries ago, it’s all the same … But we do know it’s a holy place, because the water that flows from the mountain is holy. It’s the only place in the desert that there is a chance for salvation—”

  “But there’s also suffering,” I said.

  “Ah, Tortuga, maybe that’s your salvation … that you will learn to suffer …”

  There was no salvation for me in suffering; nothing could be saved through the suffering of the vegetables which lay in Salomón’s ward. But I said nothing. Instead I asked her who were the people that passed through here.

  “The old ones,” she said, “wanderers going north, people looking for a place where they could praise their creator and find spiritual peace—you are one of them,” she said, “because you’re from the north.”