Tortuga

by Rudolfo Anaya

  I jumped out, closed the door then leaned on the window. “How much time do I have before the bus comes?” I asked him.

  “Oh, a couple of hours, but are you sure you wanna get off here?”

  “I’m sure,” I nodded. “The bus will come along this road on its way up north, won’t it?” I asked. He nodded. “Will it pick me up here?”

  “If you got your ticket, sure. Just flag it down. It picks up people along here all the time.”

  “Thanks,” I said and stepped back.

  “Have it your way, daddy-o,” he shrugged. “I guess I’ll go back up the hill and see what’s happening. Good luck!” he called and spun the car around and headed back up the hill. I watched it for awhile. The sun on my back was warm. It was thawing the earth, sucking up the ice and creating mirages of heat and moisture. The morning shimmered, and the dull building of the hospital became lost in the waves of the tremendous energy which seemed to be turning the earth round and round.

  I turned and walked down the dirt path between the houses. Behind the houses, in the small fields, men moved back and forth with their plows, using the old single plow with horses they turned the earth and prepared it for planting. Beyond them I could hear the soft hum of the river as it ran full with the spring run-off. The men called to each other as they plowed and cleaned the irrigation ditches which would bring the precious water to their fields. It was a festive time, the coming of spring. Women visited. Their homes were open to receive the fresh, spring air. At one of the houses a woman paused in her work to look up at me. She had emptied the cotton of her mattress on a large canvas and was beating it to air it. I remembered my mother … Two small boys racing a hoop with a wire ran past me, calling to another friend to join them as they ran. I felt their joy and excitement. Even in the middle of the wide desert there had been some life festering under the pain and the paralysis, waiting for the spring to renew itself. Filomón had been right … Salomón … all of them.

  The bleating of goats made me turn. In a small corral by the side of a house Josefa tended her goats. We saw each other at the same time and she waved and started to shout, but something made her stop. The smile faded from her face as she looked up at the hospital on the hill, then turned to look at me again. Instead she motioned towards the small house. I went to the door and knocked and Ismelda came running out.

  “Tortuga, oh Tortuga!” she cried and threw her arms around my neck. “You look so beautiful … and you’re going home, oh, I’m so happy for you—”

  She took my hand and we walked towards the river. We walked hand in hand along the sandy bank and then we stopped and stared at the brown, churning water for a long time, but we said nothing. We walked some more, until we were out of sight of the houses, and there we sat down on the warm sand. The green river grass grew around us. Across the river the mountain rose and glistened in the bright, warm sun.

  “I had a dream last night,” I said as I looked at Tortuga.

  Ismelda looked into my eyes and nodded. “It was a beautiful dream to share,” she smiled.

  “Maybe someday we can make that dream come true—” I said, and I told her I loved her and that someday I was coming back for her … someday when I was stronger and I could understand the magic and the joy which flowed through me and tortured me so much … someday when all that we had seen and shared would have a meaning. I held her in my arms and kissed her warm, dark hair, her eyelids, her throat, her face and cheeks which were wet with tears, and she held my face in her gentle hands and told me she loved me and that she would be waiting for me forever. I felt her hummingbird kiss, the flicker of her moist, warm tongue reaching into my soul with its sweet pollen and nectar. We turned in each others arms, like two naked lizards rolling in the warm sand, surrounded by the purple plumes of the salt cedars and cushioned by the green grasses of the river … We turned in our embrace, throbbing with love, naked and innocent as the sun which warmed us, as alive as the pounding of our hearts which hummed to the tune of the cresting waters. We rose into the golden strands of light like two mating butterflies, rainbow colored and whispering secrets … Time stood still as we felt the turning of the earth and the sun … and we dissolved into each other. I dreamed my first communion girls in her eyes, and they smiled and waved at me from across the river, and they called my name and forgave my sins … I reached out and felt her touch … and for a moment nothing existed except the sphere of time which we had turned into our own world.

  Across the river Tortuga smiled at his cousins playing in the sand. The air was full of laughter. We whispered, full of joy, words with so much meaning that they would stand forever against the erosion of time and pain … and then Josefa called, the bus was coming and for now I could not stay. I still had to find my way home. We both knew that. Our time would be complete when I had found my way out of the desert, and could return. I rose and helped her to her feet. We walked slowly to the edge of the road and I waved the dusty Greyhound bus to a stop.

  “I’ll be waiting for you,” Ismelda promised.

  “I’ll come back,” I said, “in the meantime, keep coming into my dreams—”

  “I will,” she said and squeezed my hand. “I’ll always be with you …”

  She kissed me lightly and I turned and boarded the bus. For a moment I stared at the bus driver. He resembled Filomón. “Going north,” he winked and took my ticket. On the seat just behind him sat a dwarf, an impish young man who smiled and reminded me of Clepo. “Probably going home,” he said. He nodded at my crutches. They had picked up other stragglers from the hospital before it seemed.

  “Need any help?” the driver asked.

  “Thanks,” I said, “I can make it.”

  “It’s going to be a long trip,” he smiled, “find a comfortable seat.”

  “Plenty of room! Plenty of room!” the dwarf sang.

  The bus was empty, and glowing with white light which sparkled through the windows. I walked up the aisle and found a seat where I could wave to Ismelda. I threw my crutches under the seat and placed the blue guitar next to me. Then I pressed my face against the window and Ismelda laughed. She threw me a kiss with the tips of her fingers, then the bus jerked forward and I had to crane to see her standing by the side of the road, dressed in white and waving goodbye and wishing me good luck. She was like someone from a dream, a dream of childhood when one is innocent, standing in the bright light of spring, surrounded by the first green grass and sprigs of spring.

  I waved until the bus crossed the bridge and she disappeared from sight. I turned and waved goodbye to Tortuga, and I promised to see him again when I returned for Ismelda. Then we entered the desert and I settled back in my seat and closed my eyes. A thousand thoughts and whispers fluttered through my mind. Someday I would make sense out of them, but now I only wanted to rest. I felt very tired.

  Around us the desert opened its arms to receive us. It gaily wore its spring-green coat. Off to the side, hidden in the thin line of budding trees, the river flowed south; it flowed from the north, from the green mountains that were home. That’s all I wanted to think about, home. I wondered who would be waiting for me, and what would they say when they saw me. What kind of a life would I make for myself … Life? At that moment I thought I had learned something about life by struggling so much for it and then seeing it lost when its fragile ribbon was cut, but I never really knew how boundless and limitless its magic and memories and hope could be until I heard Salomón whisper,

  Ah, Tortuga, didn’t I tell you you’d be going home when spring rolled around … And here you are, crossing the desert again, leaving behind the magic mountain … but oh how much we shared under its protection! Good times, sad times … but today we won’t dwell on the sadness of the past! No! This is a new journey! This is the journey of your return home, and what’s a journey without a song! Sing us a song, Tortuga! Make a song of rejoicing from all that you have seen and felt! Sing a song of love, Tortuga! Oh yes, sing of love!

  Startled, I ope
ned my eyes. I expected to see Salomón sitting next to me, but no, I was alone. The bus glowed with the bright light of the sun. Around us shimmered the desert mirages. Up front the driver hummed a song and the young boy at his side tapped to the rhythm. Butterflies played in the sun, visiting the first hardy flowers of the desert. I closed my eyes and smiled. It was a good time to be going home. I reached for the blue guitar and cradled it in my arms. My fingers felt the strings and strummed a melody, and I heard the words of my song fill the bus and flow out the open window and across the awakening desert.

  AFTERWORD

  For those kind readers who have read or will read Tortuga, I write these words. Forgive my hubris, but I do feel a certain pride in celebrating the 25th anniversary edition of the novel. Many have asked how I came to write this story. What is the origin of the hospital and the young characters who populate it? How much is fiction and how much autobiography?

  Tortuga is the third novel of what has been called my New Mexico trilogy: Bless Me Ultima, Heart of Aztlán, and Tortuga. These three novels resonate with the contents of my childhood and early teenage years.

  Memory is a tough old dame, says a character in one of my recent novels. Writing Tortuga was a looking back in anger at an event that changed my life. To write the novel I had to dredge up painful memories. I was Tortuga, the boy in the cast, and I had to overcome the fear of revealing what happened that summer. Telling the story became a sort of purging, which is what every story is for its writer. I also felt I had to tell the stories of the kids in the hospital.

  Pity for the protagonist and then fear that we, too, may suffer as he suffers are the elements of tragedy. Tragic tales allow those emotions to rise to the surface and thus we purge ourselves. I hope Tortuga’s story provides a catharsis for the reader. It did for me in the telling.

  The bare facts underlying the autobiographical content of Tortuga are something like this: There were no public swimming pools in the Alburquerque barrio of my young manhood. So summer afternoons a few friends and I would drive to the South Valley and swim in the irrigation ditches. One summer day I dove in and suffered a serious injury. I spent the rest of the summer in a hospital. But facts do not make fiction, and for me fiction was the only way to address the questions I raise in Tortuga. Why is there pain and suffering in the world? Bone and flesh can be broken, but can the spirit? What did the symbols which rose from my unconscious mean? The boy as turtle, the hospital in the desert, the mountain as a turtle, its healing waters, the iron lungs of the polio patients, the blue guitar. These universal symbols are also personal.

  A few early critics said the novel didn’t fit the social realism we needed in the heady days of the 1970s Chicano Movement. But every community needs the stories of heroes, and for me Tortuga was a hero. He overcame the obstacles and came out stronger. By accepting the blue guitar he would become the new poet of the barrio, the writer telling the tragic tale. The writers I admire dare to probe not only the joy but also the anguish of our lives. I hope I was doing that.

  My New Mexican geography and culture have always appeared in my work. The importance of the place in Tortuga resonates to my earlier use of the river and the llano in Bless Me Ultima. The use of dreams, or Salomon’s whispered stories, reflect my interest in the oneiric. In my recent novels my character learns to walk in dreams. I continue to explore the images of the collective unconscious, and so those symbols appear clothed in the spirit of my place.

  For centuries we New Mexicans were weaned on the oral tradition, the telling of cuentos, our folktales. I hope my stories entertain as did the cuentos, but that they also reveal the spirituality of the place and the people.

  Writers put their soul into their works, but some stories just acquire more power than others. In story and style I think Tortuga is a high point in my early years as a writer. But the novel has been overshadowed by my other work. I am most often known as the author of Bless Me Ultima. Still, I believe there is a universality in Tortuga. Who has not undergone a traumatic event in life? The hospital, by any other name, is where we go to heal ourselves. It can be an actual place or the cocoon we build around the stricken spirit. It can be the realm of the unconscious. Like the crippled kids in the hospital, we suffer from the ills of the world, patients of diseases and victims of society’s inhumanity. Some of us never recover, others learn to break the cast that binds the flesh and spirit. The novel is about leaving the wasteland and returning to life.

  Stories are about revelation. I revealed Tortuga’s experiences as much for me as for the reader. My reward is the reader who thanks me for tackling the themes in the book. That person’s comment is worth more than twenty weeks on the best-seller list. I write to touch people, and when they respond the circle is complete. The pain is lifted. As we reveal the frailties of our human bondage, we touch others. That touching makes us all stronger.

  Tortuga has acquired a following of thoughtful readers. I see their strength in their eyes when I attend a book signing. They touch me and I know they have been in one crucible or other, and they survived. More than survived, they came out stronger.

  In the hospital I learned that those prisoners in the iron lungs and those in despair had a story to share with us. Tortuga is as much their story as it is mine. Writing is about sharing one’s story with others. I hope in sharing my story I have touched someone, made whole broken wings so we can all fly again. To paraphrase the song, the stories are the wind beneath our wings.

  —Rudolfo Anaya

  A Biography of Rudolfo Anaya

  An acclaimed Chicano writer, Rudolfo Anaya (b. 1937) has become best known for his award-winning novels, such as Bless Me, Ultima (1972), Tortuga (1979), and Alburquerque (1992). Anaya, who taught at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque for nineteen years before retiring in 1993, has also published epic poems, short stories, nonfiction, plays, and children’s books. He has been credited as a leader in the Latino literary community for his groundbreaking style and his success in writing stories that capture the essence of the Chicano experience.

  He was born Rudolfo Alfonso Anaya on October 30, 1937, in the small town of Pastura, New Mexico, to Martín and Rafaelita (Mares) Anaya. Anaya’s father, who came from a family of cattle workers and shepherds, was a vaquero, a horseman who worked on the ranches surrounding Pastura, and his mother came from a family of poor farmers, who were devoted Catholics. Anaya, who was the fifth of seven children, saw his parents as the two halves of his life—the wildness and uncertainty of the windswept plains of east-central New Mexico and the stable domesticity of farm life. Soon after he was born, Anaya’s family moved to Santa Rosa, New Mexico, where he spent the next fourteen years. Later, his writings would be filled with images and memories of the people who affected his childhood. His fiction draws heavily on the superstitions and myths of the Mexican American culture that comingled with the traditions of the Roman Catholic faith. In the community’s rich storytelling tradition, legend and history blended together to create stories filled with mystery and revelation.

  Anaya spent his childhood on the llano, the plains, roaming the countryside with his friends, hunting, fishing, and swimming in the Pecos River. He was taught the catechism in Spanish, often asking the priest and his older sisters difficult questions about their faith. His family spoke Spanish at home, and Anaya was not introduced to English until he went to school. Despite the shock of changing languages, Anaya’s mother, who held education in high regard, encouraged him to excel in his studies. For Anaya, life was filled with unanswered questions, but he knew that he had a place within the very mystery that escaped his understanding.

  Life in the small, close-knit community of Santa Rosa gave Anaya a sense of security and belonging that was torn from him when his family moved to Albuquerque in 1952. In Albuquerque, Anaya was introduced to a cultural and ethnic diversity he had not previously experienced, as well as the harsh reality of racism and prejudice aimed at Latinos. Nonetheless, Anaya’s teenage years were in many ways typ
ical. He played football and baseball and spent a significant amount of time with his friends discussing cars, girls, and music. In school, he maintained good grades and avoided the troubles and dangers of gang life.

  When he was sixteen, while swimming in an irrigation ditch with friends, Anaya suffered a diving accident that changed the course of his adolescence. Diving into the ditch, Anaya broke two vertebrae in his neck and nearly died. His convalescence was long and painful, but after spending the summer in the hospital, Anaya, fiercely determined to return to his active lifestyle, eventually recovered from his injuries. The experience produced in the teenage boy a passion for life and an appreciation for the ability of adversity to either destroy or reshape one’s existence.

  After graduating from Albuquerque High School in 1956, Anaya attended a business school, intending to become an accountant. When his studies proved unfulfilling, he enrolled in the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. If the move to Albuquerque as a young teenager had rocked Anaya’s world, university life sent him into a full-fledged identity crisis. He was a Mexican American in a social and academic setting dominated by a culture that was not his own. He found his classes devoid of relevance to his history or identity. Also, English was still his second language, and he often used speech patterns that were considered wrong by his English-speaking classmates and professors. He felt different, isolated, and alienated, with no mentors to guide or support him.

  Anaya’s own questions of his place in the world as a Latino, coupled with the traditional angst of moving into adulthood and the emotional pain caused by a recently failed romantic relationship, pushed him to write as a cathartic exercise. Many of these early writings he later destroyed. Also, a freshman English class sparked his interest in literature, and he began to read poetry and novels. Despite his growing love of reading, Anaya continued to lament the absence of any authors who could serve as mentors for his unique Mexican American experience.