Tortuga

by Rudolfo Anaya

  10

  What did he tell you? one of the boys asked.

  He told me a story about the beginning …

  How does it go?

  Let him tell it, I said, and Salomón continued his story:

  I have spent most of my life on the wide beach … the beach which stretches into the dry and empty desert. I was drawn there to observe the sea turtles, those giant parasite-encrusted creatures which come lumbering out of the dark waters to lay their eggs in the warm sand. And I asked myself, what cosmic force draws them from the safety of the water to plant their eggs in the dangerous sunlight?

  What force drives them to infuse their germ of life into the earth? And why am I the observer on the beach?

  A drama unfolds. A drama which has no beginning and no end. The seasons swirl like changing sea clouds and the centuries are like the lapping of waves at my feet. I wait patiently. The sea breeze trembles, the ocean opens like a woman giving birth, and the giant turtles, slime and sea-weed clinging to them, come trudging out of the sea to deposit their eggs. Prehistoric creatures, some as old as the earth itself, some old enough to remember when the desert was an ocean, their home—giants of the sea, reptilian heads shining with sea water, eyes covered with the cataracts of time, sniffing the wind, blinking at the bright sun, feeling already the tremor of danger which the black sun brings to them.

  What is that spot of light that burns so bright? they seem to ask, and why does it throb like the cell of light in my dark blood? Giant flippers dig the wet sand. The day burns on. The eggs drop in the nests, new forms which begin in the milky liquid of transformation eons ago, in the sea, in the darkness, guided only by one lonely cell which reflects the light of the sun.

  Weeks later the sun breaks over the empty dunes in time to illuminate the beginning of the race. Again the breeze trembles with life; overhead birds cry; shadows race across the sand. The shells crack and break, squirming life breaks free to meet the electric acid of life, to breathe the air, to be blinded by the roaring sun. Some dark instinct fills them with the foreboding of death that greets all life. A horn sounds long and mournful. There is safety only in the water! The race begins! The just-born turtles scramble across the wide beach to reach the safety of the water!

  I watch dispassionately. The putrid smell of the egg shells invades the clean ocean air. The slimy, blind turtles fill the quiet beach with their squeals. Some struggle so hard to start their journey that they cave in the walls of sand and are suffocated in their own nests. For them the flight was short-lived. Those that escape the prison of the egg and the incubating sand begin their race for the sea. Overhead the burning sun drives fear into their hearts and drives them towards the safe, dark waters. There is no pause to look around, no curiousity about life on the beach … they do not see me watching them …

  For miles and miles across the sands the fledgling turtles swarm across the beach, smelling out the water, blindly dashing towards the waiting sea.

  They are driven by fear. Death stalks the beach. Suddenly there are shadows on the sand, loud, piercing screams fill the air! And the buzzards strike. Sharp beaks foul with lice and yellow mucous and downy feathers rip at the young turtles and tear at the soft limbs. The talons and beaks of the first enemy are deadly. There is carnage on the beach.

  But the way is long and full of light, Tortuga, and it reveals life even in the buzzard’s maggot stomach. That is why I watch without interference. Death squeals mix with the thrashing of wings and the shrill cries of the birds … fate is blind. Is it the strong or the crafty which survive the onslaught? Or is it those driven by fear of the blinding light?

  The ocean heaves. The tide is going out. Safety now lies farther away. The race continues across the wide beach. Other enemies strike. Giant ghost crabs reach from beneath the sand and drag the little turtles down … another feast? Yes, there is a glimmer of hope even in turtle blood. At least I feel there is, else why would I watch the race? And why do I look on so indifferently?

  Those which survive are attacked by the rock lizards, distant cousins of an ancient brotherhood, rough-scaled monsters who scramble to make a meal of turtle meat. Again the cries fill the air, shrill cries which turn my blood cold … What is more terrifying than your own kind turning on you?

  The earth itself plots destruction! The receding tide has left long stretches of mud, quagmires which suck the little turtles down! Those that can’t break free are imprisoned forever when the relentless sun hardens the mud. Still, some cross that wasteland of muck, driven by the acid which burns their soft skins, driven by the light burning in their blood! The sea calls them! While overhead, in the green-palm sky, a new danger threatens! Swift birds of prey swoop down and finish the job the buzzards started. They turn over the small turtles and stab the soft undersides. The yellow pee of death wets the sand …

  A very few survive the dangers of the beach. They stumble forward, gasping for life, needing the water … And now the most ironic enemy appears on the beach. New hoards of mother turtles are coming out of the sea to begin the cycle of spawning. Full of eggs and blind to the drama before them they crush their own children into the sand, and some, hungry from their journey to the beach, pick up the squirming young and make a meal of the future they themselves deposited … It makes me shiver, Tortuga … Is the light so dim that we don’t recognize ourselves on that wide beach? Is the sun setting on this game of life?

  My body trembles in the evening breeze. The day is ending. The sun is red as it drops into the sea. A few stragglers reach the tide and are gathered into the white arms of the sea. I feel a sigh settle in my blood. I am alone, and I feel very old … old and powerless. I watch the few young turtles who disappear into the immense, lapping water. The cycle is complete … the sucking ocean washes them away. But now the sea itself is a new enemy … and to return to it is to return to live with the ghosts of the past … to live in the sea-darkness. That is not our path, Tortuga, that is not our way. If there is any hope it lies on the path of the sun. That one glimmering cell of light which floats in our dark blood must become a sun … it must shine on new worlds …

  11

  So I pushed against the pain of the therapy sessions, because the pain was real and I would rather have it than the numbing paralysis. I felt like one of the little turtles in Salomón’s story, I wanted to break out of my shell and sniff the air; I wanted a chance to run the race across the beach again. It wouldn’t be easy, but nothing was. I had run the race before, I knew the joy and the pain in it, and I knew how it had broken so many of us, twisted our bones, exiled us—And why? Because we had dared to run? Perhaps we had loved the race too well, and had not been afraid? I didn’t know, and I had no time to care. I only wanted to move. Already I could bend my elbows and lift myself to a sitting position, and eat by myself. My left hand was unbandaged now, but nearly useless, but I made do. Now it was my legs I worked to recover.

  “You’re a mean turtle,” KC smiled. Beads of amber colored sweat rolled down her warm, brown skin.

  “Yeah,” I grunted, “I’m mean and I’m tough—” I closed my eyes in pain as she brought my knee against my chest.

  “You’re also kind of sexy,” she teased, “in a mean turtle sort of way—” She relaxed the leg, massaged the muscles so they wouldn’t tighten up.

  “Yeah, that too,” I smiled.

  “You want some more?” she asked. Her painted lips were moist with perspiration. I knew she was tired too. Sometimes we got so wrapped up in the rhythm of the exercises that we worked beyond the set time.

  “Let’s do more,” I said.

  “Sure you wouldn’t rather rest, baby?” she whispered. “I can shut the door and hold you in my arms for awhile, hold you like a baby against my warm titties, cuddle you awhile—” She laughed, a laugh deep in her stomach and throat, and I could smell the hot fragrance in her breath.

  She was a beautiful woman, big and dark and sensuous. Everyone turned when she walked down the hall. She made the blood
rush in my body, and sometimes I wished I was a dark, handsome man who could take her down. But I knew reality, and I knew her game, so I smiled and said no thanks, maybe some other time, maybe when I can walk, that’s when I’ll be ready to play with you, right now I’ll settle for another dose of therapy, and pour it on double strong, please. She laughed and said that’s how she liked her men, and we set to work again while she teased me about Ismelda and said she knew she was no match for Ismelda’s magic.

  She’s a lizard woman, she said, and she sprinkled magic on you, and now she can come into your dreams every night, and she wants you to play in the sand with her, like lizards do. Don’ worry none, honey, you’ll be able to play with her, yes sir. One of these days I’m going to pull you clear out of that shell and then you’ll be a lizard too! Then you can run and play in the sun! I can see it now, you running and trying to catch up with Ismelda, oh Lord! She laughed, and the laughter mingled with pain and the cracking of dry tendons. My muscles burned with sweet fire.

  My, my, just look at that pecker, she smiled. Her pulling and pushing and her warm body rubbing over me made me grow with hot blood. That’s a good sign, she said, then she added, for Ismelda! and burst out laughing. Pulling you out of a shell is just like pulling a little baby out of its mother’s womb … those little buggers come out wet and dirty and squirming, shocked by a spasm as the cold air fills their lungs … and the best doctor is the one who will treat them rough right off. Whack ’em in the rump! Wham bam thank you m’am, now your kid ain’t yours anymore, he belongs to the world and if the world wants to make an orphan out of him or her than it’s up to you to change the world, not the poor kid who never had one bit of choice about coming to visit us here. Toss ’em in a rough blanket right away so they can feel the prickle of life! Let them go hungry for a little while before they find the warm titty, do ’em good later in life when they find out the world’s a rough place to live in. Take those that wanna crawl back into the womb and give them a doubly hard swat and toss ’em in a basket and let them cry till they find out crying don’ do no good and they have to start lookin’ around and findin’ their own way in this world, otherwise they just curl up into their fetal position which they’re so used to and never move again—them’s the Sadsacks of life. Those kids that are treated like dolls at birth are ruined for life. They’ll always be timid about life, they’ll grow slow, be constipated all their lives, never enjoy a decent screw—

  “I can tell you weren’t one of those, Tortuga—”

  “One of what?”

  “One of those brats that sits around and wants to suck titty all day long.”

  “Well, I never turned it down—”

  She slapped her hands and laughed. “Oh no, you didn’t get busted up sitting around the dairy! You were out sniffing life in the streets, I know. Come on now, pull that leg up … up, all the way, that’s it …”

  I lifted my leg as far as I could. It was like a lead weight. I strained more and felt the muscles rip away from the bones.

  “A little more,” she coaxed.

  I grunted, lifted, farted, felt the sweat break out, felt myself wet the bed, swallowed the pain which raced through nerve and muscle.

  “A little more, honey, just a little more,” she whispered.

  “Damn you!” I cried, strained to the breaking point, trembling from the tension my body was holding, wanting to cry and curse some more and knowing I couldn’t.

  “Good,” she finally said, “good,” and her strong hands grabbed my leg as it relaxed. The pain and the tension drained away. She massaged it for awhile, then pushed it back against my stomach, until she was almost on top of me, her sweating body covering mine, her brown-amber eyes looked into mine and she said, “You gotta suffer a little, to learn to love a little—”

  Her cologne mixed with sweat and dripped on me; it was sweet and hot. She held my leg against her round breasts and stomach, and she moved her leg over mine. She moaned softly. Her hot lips brushed mine. “Now push, you little bastard!” she snapped, and I pushed as hard as I could and moved her to the side. “Ah, good,” she smiled, “lots of strength there, just a whole hell of a lot of good muscle alive in that leg—” She sat on the side of the bed and massaged my quivering legs, and I could feel the tremble in her arms while she worked. “You’re good to work with, because you’re determined—” It was a good compliment and I was grateful because they didn’t come easy from KC. “I bet you cut your mother plenty when you were nursing,” she said as she worked.

  We laughed.

  “She didn’t nurse me …” I smiled and remembered the story my mother told about going dry when I was born. She used to tell the story when we were all together, during good times when such stories fit easily into the slow give and take of the conversation, and she used to smile and touch my cheek, because I was her wayward son, but she loved me nonetheless … she smiled because she didn’t think I remembered, but I did, because every time she told the story I could hear the tinkling sound of goat bells, and in the shift of the breeze I could smell the strong, pungent odor of the goats and of the old woman who came to nurse me. She was an old woman who lived at the outskirts of the village where I was born; my father said she was a witch. I only knew her milk was as bitter as the milk of her goats, and her smell was as strong as theirs … but she had been the second woman at my birth, she had been there to assist the midwife who cared for my mother. Later, no one spoke of her, she took no credit for the delivery, the birth which was so close to death because the umbilical cord came wrapped around my neck, suffocating me, drowning me … I came like a hanged man into the world, my mother said later, and it was only the swift fingers of the two old women which saved me … I remember the old woman’s sour breath when she breathed into my mouth to pump up my lungs, I remembered her eyes staring at me, coaxing me to breathe … and then there was the scream that came from the pit of my stomach as I was startled into life. But I would never forget the eyes, the breath, the rough goat hands which swatted me and roughly brought me into life … I would never forget because she came again, when they knew my mother’s breasts had not produced the milk I needed, they went to the old woman … and my father said she laughed, she laughed so the entire village heard her coarse laughter, and she said that she was like her goats, that she was never dry … So she came every day, in the morning and in the afternoon. First there was a silence. The wind seemed to die down, then I heard the tinkling of the goat bells as she came hobbling up the dusty street, her goats scurrying around her, running to the hiss which was her command. I waited breathlessly, patiently, filled with fear, gazing at the colors of the new world and knowing that to live I had to drink that bitter milk. My mother sensed my predicament. She would take me in her arms and rock me and say, my baby, my baby, it’s only for a short while … Then she would take me outside, to the doorstep where the old woman sat on the steps in the sun … because she did not want to enter the house of a dry woman, afraid her goats would wither and go dry …

  They didn’t speak. My mother handed me to the old woman, and she unbuttoned her blouse and exposed her wrinkled but fruitful breasts. She held me on her bony knees while I drank. The goats gathered around her and nibbled at my blanket while they waited for their dam, and my mother stood quietly against the door, looking away, across the wide llano where dust devils were already dancing … she waited in silence. The old woman also looked into the distant horizon, but for her it was not space she saw, but a world that buzzed with life. She smoked, awful-smelling cigarettes which she rolled while I clung for dear life to her dugs, even while the ashes fell and burned my cheeks, I sucked her milk, in fear and in wonder I greedily sucked the bitter milk … while the wind clawed around the pitiful mud houses which clustered together for protection … protection from forces which rode the wind of the wide llano, forces which denied milk to a young woman who had just given birth and gave it plentifully to an old, withered woman … When she was empty she would look at me and laugh, gurgl
e a laugh like I gurgled the hot milk burning in my stomach, then she would hand me back to my mother, and my mother would reach for me anxiously and gather me in her arms and hold me to her breast, lend me her heartbeat to settle my trembling … and she would silently pray that I would not take a disease from the milk I had to drink … that I would not be wild like the goats … that I would not turn into a goat … Then warm and safe in my mother’s arms I could hear the old woman moving away, laughing, calling to her goats with a sharp hiss, moving away into the open spaces of the llano … while my mother’s soft hands finally brought the hot, bubbling milk and gas erupting at my mouth …

  “I feel all wet,” I said.

  “You are,” KC smiled and wiped away the milky sweat.

  “But I feel good—”

  “We’re getting there,” she nodded.

  Then she walked away, swinging her hips to the rhythm of the song she sang while she worked me over.

  Noooo-baaaady knows …

  the pain that I’ve seen

  noooo-baady knows but me …

  12

  A few letters arrived from home. Friends wrote, my brother wrote, and always I felt that somehow their lives had not changed, that they lived as they had always lived, with the small, simple concerns of each day. After awhile I didn’t read the letters, they had nothing to say to me. And after awhile the letters didn’t come anymore and my separation from my past was complete. Only my mother continued to write, explaining that there was no way they could reach the hospital, still she could share her thoughts with me, pretend she was talking to me in her letters.

  One afternoon the Nurse entered, looked at the crumpled envelope she held then placed it in my hand. It was from my mother. She wrote every week, and the letters were always the same. She prayed to the Holy Mother of God and all the saints that I would be returned safely to her. She had turned all the statues of her saints to face the wall and made a promise that they would not see her face until I was returned home. If I was absent from her sight then God and all his saints and archangels were absent from the world. That is why I offer up all my rosaries and prayers, she said, so that you may return. Each day I go to church and on my knees I make my way from the door to the altar of the Virgin, and there I pray for you. I tell the Virgin that you are a good son. I tell her I tried to keep you by my side, to protect you, but she understands that our sons become men and must follow their own destiny. She knows, she understands, she feels my agony. Her own son was crucified on the cross, she walked the streets towards Calvary at his side, she saw the nails driven into his flesh, she saw him mangled, crippled, taken down from the cross, torn and bleeding … and he died in her arms. She knows. She feels what I feel. She speaks to God. Forgive the sins of our sons, forgive the sins of the world, bring them back to us alive, well … She knows we die when our sons die, we suffer when they suffer, we die on the streets with them, in the jails, in foreign wars … our hearts bleed with their pain, our love is so strong it is a love which feels their anguish and suffering … I pray to the Virgin, and my Santo Niño de Atocha and all the saints to change this world which is crippling our sons, to make it a safe place for our sons and daughters, to stop the carnage in the streets … for that I offer up my heart, for that I turn the saints to face the wall and declare that God is absent from this world, and He will not return until the mothers of the world offer up their hearts and in an army led by the Holy Mother of God change the world, stop all wars, all diseases, all the bloodshed … for that I open my chest and tear out my beating heart and offer it to God so that he will send me your suffering, because I am strong and I can bear it.…