by Ilan Stavans
Solomon sensed a foggy film over his eyes, and his pace tottered.
Leaning on the railing, he forcefully pressed the palms of his hands against his temples, which twitched as though gnawed by worms. He was tormented by the thought that he was no more than a living gravestone to a murdered village. He was still young and full of lust for life, but his shattered soul hovered between past and present. All his impressions intertwined with that past. There, he had left his roots as well as the sun that warmed and nourished them. He could not accustom himself to the present. The big city, with its din, was alien to him. It seemed to be a gigantic larva feeding on the life juices of its inhabitants, rendering them consumptive. Everything here was artificial: the people were like moving mannequins with hollow souls. They lacked the impulse of nature, inner joy, the melody of divine creation.
Solomon wondered whether he was exaggerating. Perhaps he was the moving mannequin that staggered at the edge of life, then stood like a weed, transfixed. The theaters and coffeehouses were, after all, always crowded. Laughter resounded everywhere. A good show or movie excited people. For Solomon, however, all this was painful. It seemed to him they strove to fill the emptiness of their souls with noise and to drive tedium out of their lives. That is why they flocked to the theaters and coffeehouses and delighted in petty conversation.
Solomon pondered: By what means could he reconcile himself? The past was cut off, and the present was a gray routine. Where could he take refuge? Solitude gnawed corrosively at his soul, which howled a bitter lament.
Solomon recalled how the same melancholy seized him in his village. A sad tune would issue forth from him and return to the depths of his soul; or rather, his soul and the tune itself would sing to him until his soul emerged renewed and cleansed. Here, however, the tune was nowhere to be found. Or, perhaps, it was roaming in the amusement halls among the tables in the coffeehouses, but no one could perceive it. It was too still, too whispering. Souls that had been hollowed out like barrels could only respond to deafening noise.
The stars started, slowly, to vanish, and the sky became a black stain that frolicked uncannily with the glimmer of the city’s tower of light. A cool dawn breeze loitered about the electric cables. The shine of swinging streetlamps danced on the sidewalks and walls. Fatigue afflicted Solomon in all his limbs. Slowly, he climbed down from the roof. As he stood at the threshold of his room, a force pulled him away. In a short while, he was roaming the streets like a stray shadow.
By the time the sun shone as a red disk on the horizon, Solomon was already far from the city. Two rows of gold-shimmering grassland stretched downhill before him. Birds, chirping as they left their nests, greeted the newborn day. Solomon thirstily breathed in the country air and gazed in wonderment. He had found himself anew. All the fibers of his body sang with youthful happiness, and his lips murmured a prayer for the unredeemed souls.
Asylum
ARIEL DORFMAN (b. 1942)
Ariel Dorfman, born in Buenos Aires, wrote about his upbringing in the memoir Heading South, Looking North (1998). He teaches at Duke University and is the author of plays, poems, stories, and novels, all—like “Asylum”—with a political bent. His play Death and the Maiden (1991) was staged on Broadway and made into a movie directed by Roman Polanski. His other works include Blake’s Therapy (2001), Other Septembers (2004), and Feeding on Dreams (2011).
BARRERA LIKED TO tell everyone that he hardly slept at night. No more than a few hours, a few winks, that’s what he liked to report to his son each morning, with a smile on his face, almost triumphantly, as if the persistence over the years of that alleged insomnia were a bizarre medal of honor, proof of some strange superiority over other mortals. That’s how he’d gotten to where he was in the world, that’s how he’d crawled out of poverty and abandono, by working more, by sleeping less, not at all, hardly a wink.
But now it had come true with a vengeance.
Si quieres que esto se termine, ya sabes lo que tienes que hacer.
Ever since that initial message in Spanish had appeared on Ricky’s screen, ever since then, Barrera wasn’t sleeping at night. Not a minute, not an hour. Nothing, nada.
“What does it mean, Dad?”
He had stared at the words on his son’s computer, automatically translating them in his head, not quite ready to articulate them out loud, something warning him to beware, but beware of what?
If you want this to end, you know what you need to do.
Ricky looked at him quizzically. “If I want what to end? And what is it they want me to do, these people from this—this Comando Anesthesia who are sending me this—this—? Who are they?”
Barrera shrugged his shoulders. “How should I know?”
“C’mon, Dad. Look at what it says. ASK YOUR DAD. In the subject of the e-mail, see, ASK YOUR DAD.”
“Yes, Ricky, I read the subject of your e-mail, thanks, that’s why I’m here, that’s why you dragged me away from my work, I can read it, I have read it, I still don’t know what it means, probably it’s just spam, or maybe one of your friends at school thought it would be fun to play a joke on me, a prank . . .”
“You think it’s a prank?”
“Spam or a prank. What else could it be?”
And then Barrera had reached down violently over his son’s right shoulder and then past Ricky’s hand hovering on top of the keyboard; Barrera jabbed down and pressed the delete button, watched the message disappear from the screen, erased, gone, gone forever.
“Hey, I wanted to answer that!”
“No, you wanted me to answer, you wanted me to—what?—what were you going to suggest that I translate? Dear Comando Anesthesia, exactly who the fuck are you? And exactly what the fuck do you need me to do? and then they respond, Te dijimos que le preguntaras a tu papá, and if you studied Spanish like I’ve been asking you to for—but that’s not the point, the point is they’ll insist again that I have some sort of answer, and then you’ll respond that—though no, in fact, it’ll be me doing the work, responding for you, I’m supposed to be the go-between here, right? Mi papá no tiene la menor idea, my dad hasn’t the foggiest idea, and so on and so forth, back and forth, mensajes estúpidos come and go, somebody laughing their heads off at us, at me, wasting my time, wasting your time, even wasting their time, whoever the hell they are, the bastards.”
“OK, OK. I don’t see why you’re so upset. If it’s only a joke, like you said . . .”
Ricky was right, of course: Barrera had overreacted. Later on, in his room, unable to close his eyes even for those few winks he always bragged about, Barrera had berated himself. Hadn’t he been feeling for months that he was being locked out of his son’s existence? Hadn’t he been lamenting to the mirror just this morning that the boy no longer seemed to need him, rarely came seeking advice, seemed to be growing more distant as his seventeenth birthday approached?
If you want this to end, you know what you need to do.
Maybe he should follow the advice offered in that silly message. If he wanted this to end, this discomfort between father and son, then he did know what he needed to do: apologize to Ricky, offer his help, open wide the door he had just so rudely and imprudently slammed shut. He’d take care of it in the morning, at breakfast, after having made the kid his favorite, the buckwheat pancakes tan norteamericanos that Cynthia had taught him how to griddle to perfection, a subtle gift from the boy’s dead mother, one more remnant of her aroma in their town house; yes, Barrera would execute that plan, he’d—no, better still, he’d retrieve the message on his own, rescue it from the deleted items, and reply to it himself, explain that he would love to know what this was all about, even if it was a hoax or some such tontería, perhaps even confide in this Comando Anesthesia that he wanted to surprise his son with a detailed account, maybe the anonymous sender would commiserate with this father trying to impress a wayward son.
It was four in the morning, Ricky was asleep, now was the time.
Barrera logged into
his son’s e-mail, slipped in the purloined password, waited for the in-box to fill up.
Another message from Comando Anesthesia was waiting.
IF YOUR DAD PRETENDS HE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO, THEN SHOW HIM THIS.
Barrera hesitated.
Erase this message.
That was the first thing that flared up in his mind—to be replaced quickly by—no, I can’t, I can’t do that. One thing is to read his mail to keep tabs on the boy, keep him out of trouble, but this, I’ve never done anything like . . . not like this, and immediately: Even if I did, if I could, who’s to stop this madman? Who’s to stop them from sending the message over and over again, sending it when I’m not there to delete, when I can’t eliminate the damn thing?
He was saved from a further flood of panicked thoughts by the shadow of Ricky behind him. And then Ricky’s voice.
“Open it, Dad.”
Not even reproaching him for sneaking into that oh-so-private e-mail account, not even angered by his father’s refusal to cooperate before, by this betrayal of trust now. Merely matter of fact, merely Open it, Dad, only that.
Barrera double-clicked obediently, almost sheepishly, and there it was, there it was.
Te vamos a matar como a un perro. No, como a un perro no, porque los perros merecen mejor suerte. Te vamos a matar como se matan a los seres humanos: lentamente, para que sepas lo que te está pasando.
“Tell me what it says.”
“No.”
“Perro means dog. Is it about the dog you keep saying you’ll buy me.”
“No.”
“. . . the dog you promised to buy me if . . . ?”
“If you studied Spanish. Which would have been helpful, right? You could be reading this nonsense on your own, right?”
“You want to know what I think, Dad?”
“I’d love to know what you think.”
“I think this Comando fellow—whoever is behind these messages—I think they want you to read it to me, that’s why they sent it in Spanish, even if the subject is in English. I think it’s meant for both of us, that’s what. So—don’t force me to show it to somebody else, Dad. It said to ask you.”
“We are going to kill you like a dog.”
Barrera heard his voice translating—isn’t that how I make my living?—what he had spent his puta existencia doing, the one thing he did well since he was a child, well enough so that he wouldn’t have to do it forever in some godforsaken consulate near the stinking coconut oil–infested docks of Buenaventura, or close to the dangerous streets of Medellín, or even in air-conditioned quarters in Bogotá. Adroit and exact and rapid enough so he could graduate to an office in Washington and then to another more spacious one and ultimately a large room like the one he now occupied. Head of translators from and into Spanish at the department, head honcho, his job now and then, pressing and crushing and cornering each word in Spanish until it exposed the nakedness of its meaning, squeezing all peril and murk and ambivalence out of the language of his mother as he transferred every sentence into the quiet, clean certainties of his father’s gringo tongue. That was Barrera’s job as a kid, building a daily channel between the dark woman from that port city who had given him birth and the tall blond foreigner who left them when Barrera was eight, making that man who was his father, had been his gringo papá for eight years, making him understand what the alien mass of sounds and syllables really meant, just like now he was going to make sure his gringo son understood, and just as he had helped her understand, the hembra espléndida who was to be his gringa wife, who had once been his wife. Barrera had been doing this all his life, and now here he was again, one more time, automatically translating those words that he should not be uttering, that he had not heard for almost eighteen years, that he did not want his son to take to someone else, that Barrera wanted to keep under wraps, domesticate, make those words safe, anodyne, and under control, yes, anesthetize them.
“We are going to kill you like a dog.” Barrera’s voice was neutral, almost remote. “No, not like a dog, because dogs deserve something better. We are going to kill you like a human being should be killed: slowly, so you know what is happening to you.”
Ricky didn’t react. Just like his mother, just like Cynthia to not give away her hand, tip anyone off to what she was thinking.
All they could hear in the silence of the night was the sullen whir of the computer, stirring codes or clicks or memories inside its spotless metal frame, deep inside its metal frame or maybe not that deep, maybe on the surface, all shiny and gleaming spotless.
Barrera knew that he was supposed to explode at the suggestion of this threat to the family, swear that he would call the police, call security at the department, hunt down the perpetrator of this madness, of this—that’s what Ricky expected of him, that’s what any father would do, that’s what he couldn’t bring himself to—not a sound, he who was so good at words and with words and at ease in two languages, abruptly transformed from head honcho into resident deaf-mute. That’s what he was.
“What’s going on, Dad? What in hell is this? Who would want to hurt us?”
And before Barrera could answer, another message flashed into the in-box, another letter from Comando Anesthesia, another subject heading:
THIS IS NOT A THREAT. YOUR DAD KNOWS THIS IS NOT A THREAT.
Now it was Ricky’s arm that reached over his father’s shoulder, stretched a hand out and down to click twice on that message, revealing new words in Spanish:
Que tu papá te diga lo que sucedió en Colombia justo antes de que nacieras.
Ask your father to tell you what happened in Colombia just before you were born.
Barrera didn’t translate it right away. This was crazy. Lots of things happened in Colombia, everything had happened in Colombia: his own birth, his bifurcated childhood, his fatherless adolescence, his tentative employment at the consulate in Buenaventura, his work ethic, his genius for interpreting, his hours at the US-Colombian Friendship Institute reading every book on every shelf, his—that’s how he’d answer the inevitable question Ricky was about to unleash, his whole life before his son had been born. That’s what—though not what—Barrera was thinking, not what he’d been thinking ever since the word perro had come up, no, not like a dog, because dogs deserve something better.
“What happened in Colombia, Dad? Before I was born?”
As if Ricky no longer needed a translator, as if that word, Colombia, that country where Barrera’s parents had miraculously met and fallen in love and conceived him, as if that one word were enough for the boy to suddenly read and comprehend Spanish, as if he had not refused to learn it, to speak it, to acknowledge its existence.
“Nothing,” Barrera said quickly, too quickly. A mistake. It was a mistake to deny anything that soon, when you’re in a hurry all sorts of blunders have a chance to surface. What Cynthia had told him as she sorted out those who sought asylum legitimately from those who were faking it: Always be suspicious of the ones who answer right away, who don’t take their time. But Cynthia was not around to counsel him about what to do now, not around at all, in fact, and Barrera couldn’t help himself. He needed to slip out that one word, Nothing, before la mujer who was sending these e-mails interfered yet again, continued her harassment and—but it couldn’t be that woman, esa mujer. She didn’t know English, she wasn’t even—maybe the computer, something inside the computer itself? Had the computer itself found a way to—? Wait, wait, that’s even crazier, this makes no sense, stop it, I’ve got to end this.
End this. If you want this to end. Si quieres que esto se termine.
They waited, both of them, father and son, like twins caught in a mother’s twisted womb. They waited for guidance or a revelation or something else, anything else, a truce, maybe a truce.
It was dawning outside.
It was dawning outside and there were five days left before Ricky turned seventeen.
“I have to get to work and you—”
“Ye
ah, school.”
“I’ll drop you off.”
“No need to.”
“I’ll drop you off.”
The first thing Barrera did at work, before he had even stripped off his coat glistening with snow, before he tasted the coffee his secretary had poured for him, piping-hot Colombian Juan Valdés java always there when he arrived at precisely 8:45 each morning, before he even said hello to her, to anybody, the first thing was to log on and scuttle into Ricky’s e-mail and—
There it was.
On his screen, floating like an eye in the sky of his screen, on his screen like an eye opening and closing.
Antes de que cumpla los diecisiete, lo tienes que hacer antes.
Before his seventeenth birthday, you have to do it before then.
He logged into Ricky’s e-mail account. Was it also there, had she found a way to—?
It was there, also there in the subject: SOON HE’LL BE OF AGE. And the same words in the message itself in Spanish, which the automatic translator inside Barrera kept repeating: Before his seventeenth birthday, you have to do it before then.
He clicked savagely on the reply button. Quién eres? he wrote, and then he deleted the words in a rush. He knew who it was, who it had to be on the other end of the e-mail, the one person it couldn’t be, that woman was—.
Barrera drank down the coffee in one gulp, burning his throat, happy to feel his mouth and tongue and throat scalded, throbbing, proof that he was alive, that Ricky was alive somewhere in the same city and the same galaxy, even if he was probably looking at the same words right now, Antes de que cumpla los diecisiete, lo tienes que hacer antes. And Ricky wouldn’t show it to any of his classmates who spoke Spanish or any of his teachers, and he wouldn’t mention it to Barrera when they met that night for dinner, not then, not ever. Ricky would make believe, just like his father, that nobody was sending these messages, nobody was erasing them.