The Taste of Ashes

by Sheila Peters

  He spoke to Walter. “You still think I’m worth a thousand Isabels?”

  Walter’s face crumpled into a laugh. “I do. And you’re at least as much trouble.” He gestured toward Álvaro’s tube of drawings. “All these females. Eloise, the Coleman woman, this therapist. It’s not good for a priest. They don’t understand the mental toughness you need to do this job.”

  Álvaro picked up his case and his drawings and walked with Walter down to the dining room, goaded by Walter’s predictable response. On the way he began to tell him about a woman from a small village in the north of Guatemala. About mental toughness. How it began, often, with fear. When the soldiers came, she hid, but she could see everything. The people were herded into the church, with kicks and rifle butts. Children were thrown inside, thumping to the floor. A soldier dragged a screaming woman from a nearby house. He grabbed the little girl clinging to her legs, and sliced the cloth that tied the baby to her back. He swung them like rags and the hidden woman covered her eyes thinking he was going to crack their heads against the tree shading the church steps. When she looked again another soldier was holding the children, one in each arm, laughing as the others threw the mother to the ground and took turns raping her. Sometimes two on her at once. Their rifles inside her. When they were done, they threw her limp body into the church, slammed the door, and hammered it shut. They poured gasoline on the wooden porch and tossed a match.

  Álvaro set down his case and pushed open the dining room door. Walter bent over his walker, not moving.

  “The woman could not stop watching the terrified girl and the crying infant. She prayed to the Virgin of Guadalupe for their souls and thanked her for one small miracle when the man threw them, still alive, into the back of the truck with the other soldiers. The truck drove around and around the church until the screams stopped and even the tree outside the door was burning. They finally drove away with the boy and the girl, her nephew and niece. The woman they raped was her sister.”

  Walter stood in the doorway as Álvaro poured them each a cup of tea from the huge brown pot that stood wrapped in a cozy on the sideboard. He spooned in sugar, poured milk, and set out the cups on the worn lace tablecloth.

  Walter spoke. “Álvaro, I know that women suffer.”

  “As she breathed in that smoke,” Álvaro continued, relentless, “she smelled the roasting flesh of the rest of her family. She took them all in, she said. Made a place for them in her body. Sometimes — this was years later — she could feel the whole village inside her, especially when she was afraid. They would jostle for room under her rib cage, in her heart and her lungs, and in her trembling bowels. She gathered courage from their tumult and tried to calm them.”

  Walter’s fingers made the cross. Álvaro finally looked away, his tongue awkward, Ana Elisabeth’s story in his mouth.

  “She hid for a while in the hills and then made her way to a village on the other side of the mountains. People knew better than to ask questions. She helped with the crops, and married a man whose wife had died in childbirth. She cared for his children but had none of her own. The clamouring in her belly would not let her rest. She wanted her sister’s children.”

  Walter came through the door, sat down and took the warm cup in his hands. Drank. Álvaro told him how the priests were back in Quiché by then, some of them gathering testimony for Bishop Gerardi’s report. The exhumations had begun. People were speaking out.

  “She came to me.” His bitterness and regret were bones in his throat.

  “We went to Guatemala City and inquired at the orphanages. We asked a hundred useless questions. One day we came out of an office to see the Army Day floats passing in the street. There were hundreds on the streets, rows and rows of khaki and camouflage. When the red berets of the kaibiles, their faces and arms streaked with black, passed us, I could hear her stomach churning. She had a way of looking soldiers in the eye, always looking for her sister’s murderers. And then she saw them.”

  “The soldiers?”

  “The children. Dressed like a little prince and princess, waving from an army float. The girl, who was about twelve, looked around when her aunt called out her name. Looked around and burst into tears.”

  Walter’s face was full of hope, ready for a happy ending.

  “They were finer featured and lighter skinned than most Indians and could pass for Ladino. Their adopted mother, a good Catholic, was moderately wealthy. Reports said they were happy children, well behaved, attentive. Going to a good school.”

  “What did you do?”

  “That’s my question to you. The aunt lived in a shack with a tin roof and a dirt floor. She wove a few things to sell, planted a garden, and tended some chickens and a cow. Her husband planted corn and beans and picked up labouring jobs where he could. His children went to school when they weren’t needed to work.”

  Álvaro looked at Walter across the table. The kitchen help had been in and out, setting for lunch; there was a fresh pot of tea.

  “Here is a woman who has risked her life to find her sister’s children. She is willing to take them in, feed them, clothe them, and try to send them to school. By doing so, she is endangering not only herself, but also her husband’s family. The entire village. She asks me what to do.”

  “The adopted mother’s Catholic, you say?”

  “Probably more devout than the aunt.”

  Walter shifted uncomfortably. “Could she not be introduced as the aunt?”

  Álvaro did not answer.

  “She would not have to lie. She is the aunt.” Walter was practical. His hands expressive. “She could tell the mother. They could plan together.”

  “Aside from the problem caused by the aunt’s very Mayan features, I thought the same. I arranged a meeting with the children’s adopted uncle, a man I knew.”

  Álvaro met Vinicio in the small restaurant just off Central Square, a place they’d met two or three times before to sort out a difficult situation between the church and the military. If these particular inquiries are dropped, Vinicio would suggest, perhaps these other questions will be answered. Inviting him to visit la finca where his father still ruled supreme. More dairy now than cattle. Cheese even, if you can believe that, he’d laughed. Álvaro always noncommittal. Polite in his questions. The mother an American citizen now who never set foot in Guatemala. Clara a devout housewife in a villa near the new cemetery. Split her time between her children and charitable works.

  “My mother worked for his family,” he explained to Walter. “I amused him. I was a fool, he thought, for choosing the priesthood. And then leaving a comfortable life in Canada and returning to Guatemala. But I was useful. No matter how well established, how wealthy, people always find information valuable in a political situation as fluid, shall we say, as Guatemala’s.”

  Turn it into a story, Chris had suggested. Give the events a framework. Contain them. Create distance from what your body is experiencing now. A past and a habitable present.

  He was a powerful, urbane man, Álvaro told Walter, sitting there with an amused smile on his face. Álvaro asked after the sister, Clara. The smile had flickered when Álvaro enquired more closely about Clara’s children. Disappeared when he told him about the aunt, an odd coincidence, he suggested, saying nothing about the months of searching. Nothing about the testimony Ana Elisabeth had sworn. Perhaps a visit to put her mind at peace about their welfare? Would Clara be interested?

  Vinicio had been adamant; Clara was a fragile woman, just finding her way to happiness with these children. There would be absolutely no contact. It was a clear warning. Vinicio was stubbing out his cigarette, rising to leave when Ana Elisabeth walked into the restaurant as they’d arranged so that Vinicio could meet her and be reassured by her calmness. On his way out the door, Vinicio walked right past her.

  What Álvaro didn’t tell Walter was that while Ana Elisabeth stood, adrift in the room full of Ladino bank clerks and civil servants, the strip of bright cloth bound up in her br
aided and coiled hair as a token of resistance, Álvaro’s concern had been all for Clara. Fragility? Finding her way to happiness? He found he wanted to see her, to comfort her if he could. Ana Elisabeth had shaken his arm to get his attention. You didn’t tell him about me, she begged. Say you didn’t tell him. She was terrified.

  He told Walter about Ana Elisabeth’s fear. He’d pulled her into the chair, hushing her. He’s their uncle, he said. I’d hoped he would help. He’s not a bad man, he said, and saw her face close against him. The teeth clenched behind the lips.

  “What was it?” Walter asked.

  Álvaro told him where she’d seen Vinicio.

  Walter’s face spasmed. “And so was complicit in the rest?”

  “In command.”

  “Is this what got you into trouble down there?”

  Álvaro took off his watch cap and rubbed it across his eyes. His hair stood awry.

  “She was a very simple woman,” he said. “No education to speak of. Very little religious training — the catechists in Quiché were always being killed. But she understood the dilemma as well as we do. And she was more willing to trust God than I was. Than I am.”

  “What happened?”

  Álvaro’s voice was harsh. “The family in her belly would not give those children up. The children had lost their spirits, the voices told her, and they would sicken and die if she did not help them. She felt compelled to do as they requested. She approached the woman. But she never made it inside the door.”

  “She changed her mind? Probably for the best.”

  “I don’t think so.” Álvaro pushed his cup aside. “She’s dead.”

  Walter’s hand crept across the table to cover Álvaro’s. The veins showed blue through the mottled skin, the knuckles swollen and arthritic. “We are born into suffering,” he said. “We need to trust in his wisdom.”

  Álvaro’s hand clenched. Everything he had told Walter was water swirling down a drain. He could not trust himself to speak.

  “Open yourself to his mercy.” Walter’s hands squeezed his own.

  I am wide open, that’s my trouble, Álvaro thought. I am punctured. Gales howl through my openings. And when the voices come, they are not the voices of God.

  He finally spoke. “Don’t preach Job to me, Walter. I have not said no to God, but I can’t bring myself, right now, to say yes. I need to disentangle the lies in me from the truth. If God wants me back, he knows where to find me.”

  Walter opened his mouth to speak again. Álvaro struggled to keep his voice down. “My mother was stronger than any man I have known. Ana Elisabeth’s faith was a thousand times stronger than yours or mine. I could name dozens more. I don’t know what has become of Isabel, but I do know that I’m not worth a hundred cockroaches, much less a thousand women.”

  Álvaro didn’t understand then why the fight fizzled out of Walter. He saw the usual impatience. The underlying compassion. But not the anger he expected. There was something else. A wariness. Maybe it was Margaret appearing in the doorway, her arms full of roses. She laid them on the table, pulled small scissors out of a pocket and began snipping off the ends and arranging the flowers in the water pitcher.

  “Can you still cast a fly, Father Walter?” she asked.

  Walter coughed in surprise. “There’s not many fish in Vancouver’s storm sewers.”

  “There are still Oblates up north, aren’t there? You and Álvaro should plan a trip there next summer. Isn’t there a pilgrimage on the shores of some big lake?”

  The old man’s face filled with longing. “Rose Prince of the Carrier Nation,” Walter whispered. “She was one of those women, Álvaro. She found her place in the church in spite of her afflictions. Prayer was her therapy.”

  “Lucky girl,” Margaret said, clearing up the rose clippings and wrapping them in one of the napkins from the dispenser on the table. And Margaret is one of those women, Álvaro thought, who knew how to handle priests like Walter, and priests like Álvaro. He wondered if she had plans for him.

  “Is that all your luggage?” she asked as she went out the door into the hallway, carrying the pitcher of roses. Álvaro followed her, nodding. He bent to lift the case, but paused, uncertain, as she walked down the hall, genuflected at the chapel door, and went inside. She came back out, empty-handed.

  “The roses,” he stammered. “They’re lovely. It’s very kind of you.”

  “They’re for the Virgin,” she said.

  “The Virgin?” Walter asked from the doorway.

  “The Virgin of Guadalupe.” She looked from one man to the other. “It’s her feast day.”

  11

  Greg had taken to bringing Janna a smoothie and energy bar most mornings as she wrote her last papers. Walking her to class and sitting with her in the cafeteria. When one of her stats classmates said something about how lucky she was to be hooked up with him, she realized they were seen as an item. She wondered if that was why she hadn’t heard from David. If he’d asked around, he’d have been told. Greg was, she came to realize, a big and awkward deal in the business school. Each night she was sleeping less, lying awake, wondering what to do about him. Talking to her worry dolls, lining them up and asking them when he would make a move. How he would go about it. Why he hadn’t already. So she could tell him no thanks.

  The campus emptied as she knocked off her exams, one by one. Financial Accounting — easy. Income Taxation — not too bad. By then the smokers outside the social work building were gone and she’d pretty much given up on David. Logistics and Operations Management — in spite of missing that last class, she squeaked through. International Marketing — she prayed Amy would never see her answer to the question on strategies to develop and protect international branding. And now she wrestled with Stats, distracted by the heating system’s knocks and bangs, the only noise in the all but deserted residence. Sleep had become impossible. She talked to one or two listless students who weren’t going anywhere for Christmas. She half hoped she’d hear from Isabel, that maybe Trevor had passed on her phone number, but there’d been nothing. She was briefly tempted by Amy’s offer of a ride to Smithers, but the timing was off.

  The day before the exam, Greg knocked on her door, his pack over one shoulder, his duffel coat unzipped. She asked him for help with a stats problem. He talked for twenty minutes about the history of the problem, the development of the formula, and how a statistician in Sri Lanka was working on a new analysis. He leaned against her desk, holding his pale hands cupped in front of him as if he were showing her an invisible ball, twisting and turning it so she could see it from every direction.

  She excused herself to go into the bathroom. The facecloth, wadded into a stiff clump, stank of mildew. She threw it into the corner with the rising pile of dirty clothes and scrubbed her face with her hands. Her red-rimmed eyes stared back at her from the streaked mirror. What gives with you, girl? Where’d this inner pig come from? She brushed her teeth.

  Greg was flopped on her bed, reading a book outlining new community development economics. She started on another problem. Around noon, he opened his pack and brought out buns and a squat Mason jar of soup to microwave. Apple slices and carrot sticks. When she thanked him, he brushed her words away. He thought there should be more contact between economics and commerce students, he said. It made her feel like a science project.

  They wolfed the food in a silence she found more and more tense. Waiting for him to do something. She finally invented a study group that met at one. He plunked his feet on the floor, gathered up his food containers, pulled his jacket off the hook on the back of her door, and disappeared. As soon as he was gone, she was lonely. She checked her email again. Gave up on stats and burrowed into her sheets. Dozing, she recalled random details of David’s body. The dark nipples. The fine line of black hair leading from his navel to his thick pubic hair. His pale penis bobbing as he pulled the condom over its length. She touched herself as she lay there, her fingers slow and tender until she fell asleep with
both David and Greg mixed up in her dreams. She couldn’t get Greg’s musty smell out of her nostrils, it was everywhere and she was thrashing her head around trying to make it go away but then it was David who shrank into a child, a child calling to her across a field of broken glass, calling her to help, please help and as she stood there, her feet bare, she felt a pulse in her vagina and an old-fashioned Coke bottle fell out and shattered, the noise bringing her awake and afraid in the mid-afternoon gloom. A glass had fallen and broken on the floor. She barely moved until morning.

  “What are you doing for Christmas?” Greg asked her as they walked to her last exam. How pathetic, she thought. This geeky guy was feeling sorry for her, was going to ask her to go home with him for Christmas. He’d told her a bit about his father, a research chemist on long-term disability because of some kind of dementia, the mother dithering and feeding them all the time. Their old house crumbling, his word, in the middle of an upmarket Shaughnessy neighbourhood. What fun that would be.

  “My family is Buddhist,” she said. “We don’t do Christmas.”

  “Oh, what practice do you follow? Theravada? Vajrayana?”

  She ignored him and swung her bag over her shoulder. She held out a hand. He looked at it. She grabbed his, shook it. “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks for everything. Have a good Christmas.”