!Click Song

by John A. Williams

  “Yes.”

  “Nice?”

  “Yes.”

  He tightened his grip, dug into the box.

  “Prettier than Mom?”

  “Naw. You kiddin’?”

  He stroked slowly again, sped up his swing, tensed for the pitch. Bases loaded. Bottom of the ninth. Two men out. Winning run at the plate.

  “Is his mother married now? I mean, he’s got a father since you’re not—”

  “She’s married. He’s got a father, and besides, Mack, Alejo’s a big guy now. It’s gonna be all right, okay? Okay?”

  “Wait—wait—”

  His swing was smooth and level. Pow!

  “That sucker’s gone!” he yelled.

  We slapped palms down and palms up and trotted to the locker room. It was our ball game.

  I am at the door at the same time the bell rings. I’ve heard the elevator stop, its doors open and Julio giving directions. I am both nervous and relieved. I am at last meeting Alejo. According to plan, Allis has taken Mack to the Park. Glenn and Maija have delivered Alejo to the building. By now they are picking up Mack to carry him to the Stadium, where the Yankees and Red Sox are playing. Allis will go downtown to have her hair done. The apartment is filled with the smells of food. Allis cooked all morning. It smells like some kind of feast day. It is a special day. I open the door. He looks like me, though I can see something of his Sierra Leonian grandfather in the cheekbones. He looks younger even than he is! His eyes remind me instantly of his mother. But, overall, he looks the way I do in those old boot camp photographs. “Alejo,” I say. I embrace him. He sets his two shopping bags on the floor and embraces me in return. He smiles at me. His teeth are regular, strong and white. “Hello, Father,” he says. We stand for another couple of seconds, and then he takes my hand, raises it to his lips and kisses it. When I lived in Spain, sons about to take leave of their fathers or returning home to them did that. I embrace him again, smelling his cologne, conscious of his exquisitely tailored Paseo de Gracia suit. I lead him into the apartment and have him deposit his bags in a corner. Gifts, I can see. He looks around the living room. His movements are tentative, respectful. He smiles again. I like his smile. I say, “I’m very happy you’re here,” and he then says, “It feels good to be here at last. How is your wife?” I reply, “Very well, thanks. And your friend, Dolores?” He smiles his gratitude. “She is fine, thank you. She drove me to the airport.” His English is good, tinged with a Spanish accent. We are, I think, into the necessary ritual. However long it takes, it must be done. He says, “Glenn and Maija just left me, so I know they’re all right, but Mack, my little brother?” I like the way he says it, boldly. What after all can be changed now? “He’s okay. He should enjoy the ball game. We’ll all be together later this afternoon. You’ll see him.” Alejo approaches me, places his hands on my shoulders. I notice the starched cuffs of his pima cotton shirt, the wisps of gold cuff links. “But how is my father? Are you well?” I place my hand gently against his face. “Yes, Alejo, my son. Your father is now quite happy. Your mother, is she all right?” “Ah, yes,” he says. “She sends her warmest regards and congratulations.” I say, “Thank you. That’s kind of her. And Federico? Teresa?” He nods. “They’re in good health, thank you. Federico is an anthropologist working with the Basques—a touchy business these days with bombs going off all over the place.” “It’s bad, then,” I say. He nods again. “How is your er—father?” I ask, self-consciously. But he smiles his understanding. “Very busy and very well, thank you.” Alejo takes off his jacket and we sit and talk of his work, my work, Glenn’s work. We pause for wine and snacks. After, he goes into one of his shopping bags and hands me one of the gifts. It is a book, of course. “Please,” he says. “Open it.” I can already smell the old leather. No, it’s lambskin. The pages are brown. The type is old Gothic, and then I see worn letters that had been stamped upon the cover: Viaje al Parnaso. But it cannot, simply cannot, be a first edition, three hundred sixty-three years old. Alejo sees the question on my face. “Yes!” he says, going to the bags again. “Glenn tells me that you like old maps. Well, you’ll have to go some to find one as old and as accurate as this one!” He helps me to unroll it. We’re on our knees on the floor. Cervantes’ Journey to Parnassus now on a table. Alejo puts books along the sides of the map. “Do you know it?” I say, “The Dulcert Portolano?” He shakes his head. “Close. Nicòlo de Canerio, 1502.” I cannot believe it. I finger the parchment. “The original?” I whisper. He’s enjoying my astonishment. He smiles hugely. I think, There is something wrong with all this. But I thank him profusely while thinking that I should be showering him with gifts instead of just the copy of Pushkin that I had had bound in leather and in which I wrote a careful inscription. He is gracious about my awkwardness. We settle back with more wine and he says, “When Glenn and Maija were in Spain, they took me with them to Sitges—how awful all those places along the shore have become. We looked up your friend Señor Yanez. He ran away with a nun; drove off in his old Seat. His wife is still at the hotel. A charity case, I suppose. She told us how you’d looked for my mother and how you’d come back. My grandmother told me too, years later. I just wanted you to know that I knew, and that if I ever thought badly of you, it was because I hadn’t come to know yet. But she married Felipe and everything turned out all right.” He shrugs. I wonder if Dickens could have arranged a better story. It feels so good that Alejo’s here. I could weep. He is reading the inscription in Pushkin over and over again. Tears roll out of his eyes. We uncork another bottle of vino blanco, muy seco. We sit and smile at each other. It is good to have, finally, all present and accounted for.

  I came out of the daydream when I heard Allis and Mack in the hallway. The door to the apartment banged open and they erupted into the foyer.

  “Where are they?” Allis demanded. “I’m going to be late—”

  The phone rang.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Mack said. “We’ll be late for the game.”

  The phone rang again.

  “Lemme get the phone,” I yelled. I rushed to the kitchen extension, my stomach plunging in foreboding. I could see Allis snapping glances at her watch. Mack was pouting.

  “Dad!” Glenn was shouting. “The plane—”

  “The plane?” I shouted back.

  “What about the plane?” Allis was suddenly beside me and, changing her mind, then ran to the bedroom extension. Mack was suddenly quiet, suddenly very still.

  “The plane’s in, but Alejo’s not on it.”

  I heard Allis groan.

  “Maija’s checking the passenger list now. He was on the red carpet list.”

  I knew Allis was thinking of all the food she’d cooked and the irresponsibility of young people. I groaned.

  “What is it?” Mack asked. He was primed for a disaster. Tears were already welling up in his eyes.

  “Maybe he just missed the goddamn plane,” Glenn said, “but that’s not like him. If anything, he’s always early for his appointments—Here’s Maija—”

  We could hear them, then Glenn returned. “He wasn’t on the flight, Dad.”

  “Would he have taken another, do you think?”

  “He would’ve called. Five hours between here and Spain, Dad.”

  I was drawing blanks. I kept saying into the phone, “Hmmm. Hmmmm.”

  “Listen, Dad. I think we’ll go back to the loft. He’s got the number there. I know Allis has cooked—”

  “Since you’ve got the car, we’ll bring it down by cab,” Allis said.

  “Hi, Allis. I can’t think of anything else to do, can you?”

  “Honey?” she said to me.

  “But there won’t be another flight until tomorrow,” I said, “unless he’s taking another airline. Maybe we got the dates mixed up? Maybe it’s tomorrow?”

  “It’s today, Dad, but maybe he’ll come tomorrow. Leave the food and we’ll get Chinese and just wait for a call or call him.”

  “Give me his num
ber. I’ll call before we start down.”

  “It might be better if Glenn calls, honey,” Allis said.

  “Oh, yeah. Okay. Depending on traffic—you oughta be at the loft in about an hour and a half?”

  He thought so and hung up.

  Allis returned to the living room with a scowl on her face. “To hell with the hairdresser,” she said.

  “No ball game?” Mack said.

  “No.”

  “What could’ve happened?” she asked.

  I didn’t try to answer. To Mack I said, “Another time, okay?”

  Glenn and Maija made good time. They’d already called Alejo; there’d been no answer. Maija, Allis and Mack went for the Chinese. Glenn and I drank and stared at the phone. It was smeared with Maija’s paints. The heat was pressing into the place; the air conditioner worked in vain. Through the windows, the buildings seemed draped in a silver mist. This, I told myself, is the daymare. We ate with little talk and tried once again to call Alejo. Darkness settled over the city. Voices drifted up from the streets along with the sounds of traffic.

  When the phone did ring, it startled us so much that none of us moved until it had rung the third time. Glenn, with a leap, snatched it off its hook, turning to wave us into silence.

  “Yes, yes. This is Glenn Douglass.” He listened. We moved closer to him. We watched his face, immediately cued into the slightest inflection in his voice. His eyes stayed locked with mine. “Monica Donoso—” He cupped his hand quickly over the mouthpiece. I was already shouldering my way to the phone when he said, “Alejo’s mother.”

  I held my hand out for the phone. “Monica? This is Cato. CAYto.” My voice was shaking, my body, my hands. I tried to distill my complete being down to one monstrous ear through which I could hear and understand everything.

  It was all over radio and television and in the papers. She had just flown in from Fernando Po, where the Spanish authorities had contacted her. Alejo and Dolores were missing, their car found empty on the autopista leading to the airport. There were bullet holes in it, but no blood.

  My stomach settled uneasily down near the tops of my thighs.

  The Falangists, she said, the dirt of the earth. They had not died with Franco. Dolores was very popular among the Andalusians, in her own way, more popular than El Córdobes had been, because she was political and had had some success bringing the Catalans, Andalusians and the Basques together. The people loved her. She was like La Pasionaria. People loved her concerts, too. She brought back the Republican spirit of the Civil War in the cause of a truly united Spain. The Falangists didn’t want this. The ruling powers never want a united people unless they are fighting another country. They want the country filled with the powerless. Together, Monica said, Alejo and Dolores were very political. His second volume was even more political than the first. It was already being discussed. She snarled into the phone: “This redemocratization of Spain. A joke. This book will be even more for the people, not for King Juan Carlos and his group, or Suárez or González or even Carrillo. Carrillo didn’t have to hide in a closet for forty years the way so many of them did.” She paused. “They’re missing, is the official report, but—

  “I’d like to come,” I said.

  “It would be awkward for Felipe,” she said simply.

  “I would have met him today,” I said.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Let me give you my number, and address—after so many years.”

  She took them down.

  “Monica, what should we be prepared for?”

  “We’ll hope for the best, Cato.”

  “Are the police doing everything? Does Felipe have influence? Will it help if I call my publisher there?”

  “By all means, call your publisher. Felipe has some influence. We will see how much. And the police? Well …” She stifled a sob. “’Dios, Cato.”

  All the while I was telling my family what’d happened, I smelled something burning, and even on the way home, steam draped noxiously over the city, I smelled it, smelled it.

  These forces, these people! How they attacked in silence, like worms, chewing holes in the fabric of things that should be. And they dared, dared come this close to my clan, reaching casually over language, culture, history and its accidents and propaganda, and oceans to do so! A poet! A poet just reaching twenty and a flamenca dancer with clicking heels and clicking castanets who threaten a portion of someone’s world? Writing and dancing = dragon’s teeth that might spring up armed and strong men and women? (And who else but a poet, but a dancer, but an artist—save those used like high-class whores who slip their fucks between the worlds?)

  I called my publisher when we got home. Of course, all of Spain was talking about it. Like everyone else in artistic and intellectual circles, he was concerned, and would do as much as he could. After all, we had had many years together, and he knew my interest in Alejo was based on something more than mere admiration. He would keep me informed of every development.

  We sat and stared at television without seeing it. Mack went to sleep. I carried him to bed, took off his sneakers. Allis slept, her head in my lap. The tube flickered on with its inanities and commercial messages. We could have gone to bed; a phone was near. It seemed inappropriate to sleep. Some messages of the mind might pierce the cosmos and be heeded; who knew?

  The phone rang. Allis sat up, and I was at it with the second ring. It was not an overseas call and the caller seemed confused. I recognized the voice, I thought.

  “Hu—hello? Is this Cato Douglass, please?”

  Quite proper, approaching pompous, for seven-thirty A.M. “Yes, Jeremy?”

  “Oh! You recognized my voice. Forgive me for calling so early, Cate. It’s been a long time. How are you?”

  “What’s up, Jeremy? You’re right. It is early.”

  “Sorry, but I wanted to get to you before Shelly Popper did. I understand that the young Spanish poet Alejo Donoso’s in town and that he’s a friend of yours—”

  “—”

  “Cate? Can you put me in touch with him for an interview?”

  “He—Who told you he was a friend of mine?”

  “Oh, apparently his publisher over there sent announcements to all the book people in New York. How do you know him, Cate?” The burn-smell grew stronger.

  Allis was fixing coffee. She looked as though she hadn’t slept in a week.

  “He didn’t come. There was some trouble. He’s missing. I can’t talk any more now. I want to keep the line open. Tell Shelly. Tell them all.” I hung up.

  I leaned against the wall. I felt like month-old shit.

  “What do you think?” Allis said.

  “I don’t want to. I don’t want to think about it,” I said.

  “I know. But you’re gonna have to.”

  “He’s all right,” I said. “They’re all right.”

  The spring had been bad and now the summer was worse. It was passing slowly, sullen with humid heat, and there was no word about Alejo and Dolores. Glenn and Maija had returned to Spain, being less of an embarrassment to Felipe than I would have been, but their letters were as empty of real news as the clippings they and Monica and my publisher sent. These were growing shorter, more perfunctory, crumbs to a still hungry, though diminishing, constituency. I was seriously wounded, but I didn’t mind the wound half as much as my vulnerability, which had caused it in the first place. Inwardly I screamed and raged at my inability to do anything about anything.

  I awoke mornings now feeling as though I had not slept even the few hours I usually did. I was surprised when Allis replied, to my complaint, that I had indeed been sleeping, and snoring like hell into the bargain. Anger became my shadow, and often tensed as if to take on life of its own. I was exhausted, made mean, by the constant struggle to contain it.

  Yet around Unmarked Graves, in some desperately subconscious fashion, I had built an event-proof compartment. I escaped into it every moment I could, often to Mack’s bewilderment and to Allis
’ alternating fury and despair. I felt nearly all right, almost whole, with things in balance when I was working on the book, and at a loss when away from it, perhaps like an actor who, playing Shakespeare one day, finds that he must play Simon the next.

  Old dreams began to flash faraway lightning down the hours when I lay tensed between sleep and wakefulness. Almost, I thought; I’d almost found him. Then, enraged at myself for these thoughts that insisted on past tense presentation, I would try to switch off thinking. But, the thoughts kept coming, like Jupiter smashing right through Earth.

  Old, dovetailed habits began to slip their positions, and I would look back at the end of each day, amazed that it had been so shitty. Fights with Mack. Arguments with Allis. Curses at my chairman, who was calling meetings in preparation for the school year. And when Glenn and Maija returned, empty-handed, newsless, I was short and gruff with them. What they wished to say I knew was not good. Therefore, I gave them no opportunity to say it. But they had brought back the typescript of Alejo’s second collection, and Allis promptly dropped most of her clients to work on the English translation, since Alejo had not done so before he—

  Well. I think Allis was doing it for me. And doing it for Alejo. Maybe she thought we’d get to know him through his raw work. And it was a challenge to her artistic instincts. More than anything else, I saw her work as an attempt to rewind the string about our lives that I was unraveling. What she was doing for my son, about my son, gave me great solace, as memorial services or monuments often do.

  Nevertheless, I tolerated no serious talks about Alejo; rejected, almost even before uttered, any tenders of sympathy from those in my family. Of course, PEN, the Writers Guild and the Authors Guild had demanded earlier a full investigation by the Spanish authorities, but these demands had come to naught, and might just as well have been issued to South Africa on behalf of Steve Biko—