A Lush and Seething Hell

by John Hornor Jacobs

  I inhaled . . . but could perceive nothing of her. Cleave had asked me, “Do you not remember?” and I hated him for that. More than the burns, the shocks, the torture they put my body through, that question was worse.

  It pained me even when Cleave was absent.

  • • •

  Sobre el excremento y sus usos. On Excrement and Its Uses . . .

  One-eyed, peering through a monocled glass, hunched over photographs.

  La madre venenosa se convierte en regente. The Poisonous Mother Assumes Power.

  I finished translating a photo, tore the handwritten sheets from the legal pad, and slipped the paper under the door. Minutes later, the bolt rattled and slid back with a wooden thwock, and two soldiers entered and placed on the desk a tray bearing two boiled eggs and a bottle of wine. I drank the wine, stuffed the eggs in my mouth, and stumbled around my cell, screaming at the walls until I could stand no more.

  Los grados variantes de sacrificio. The Varying Degrees of Sacrifice . . .

  Apprehension of the divine through subtraction. I begged walls for cigarettes, for more wine, but neither Cleave, nor Sepúlveda, nor the soldiers answered. I sat at the desk, poring over a particularly hideous Latin passage. On my bloody knees, I placed my mouth at the gap at the bottom of the door and whispered hoarse pleas for a Latin-to-Spanish dictionary. It did not open.

  Racking my withered brain for declensions, definitions of words, I managed to get through the photograph. In this picture, there was a shadow, half falling upon the cramped page of the Opusculus Noctis, and I assumed it was that of the photographer. I found myself at odd times wondering what he might have been wearing. What he had in his pockets. Bali cigarettes? A flask full of Glenlivet? A wallet with American dollars? Or Belgian francs? Were there pictures in the wallet? He was a photographer, after all. Was there an aproned, smiling wife, beaming from a stamp-size picture? An apple-cheeked, fat and roly-poly child? Or did he know what it was he photographed?

  A hand was more than a finger. An arm, greater than a hand. A testicle was less than the phallus itself but greater than an ear. Both testes would yield much power. Lips, nose—the concentration of senses—those were weighty. An eye was close to titanic. A heart or head or full sex—berry, twig, root, and stem—trumped them all. But that was just if you had no . . . subjects. Pretium. The author was very sad at this recipe. How to make bread when you have no flour—cut off a finger. When I was finished, I didn’t bother recopying the verses, cleaning up the marked-out failed starts or multiple guesses at words I wasn’t certain about. I ripped the pages from the pad and stuffed them under the door and waited.

  This time, a carafe of water and a small bottle of vodka. A pack of American Pall Mall cigarettes and five strike-anywhere matches. A tin of sardines. A sleeve of crackers. A withered orange. Paper napkins. A Latin-to-Spanish dictionary. I consumed all of the food quickly, and began a furious session of chain-smoking and sipping the vodka.

  La voz de los muertos. The Voice of the Dead . . .

  The dead lie inert, like rocks, waiting to be picked up. Whatever passage they might have after life takes a long time and they can answer questions with the right pretium. The speaking with the dead, all in all, is a bargain, really. A finger, a toe. A pint of blood. The right phrase said with the correct intention. Though there’s a footnote—a sentence boxed in blood—that intention outweighs iteration and recitation.

  Before I finished, the door opened, and soldiers entered; Sepúlveda, and another man, one I’d never seen before. He had a black leather bag. The soldiers took my arms, held me to the floor. The placid man, the new man, he withdrew a long needle and filled it from a phial and injected it into my arm. You would think that with all I’d been through, I wouldn’t wince. They forced open my mouth, shoved in acrid-tasting pills, and held my mouth shut until I had to swallow. As I struggled against the soldiers, the doctor probed my eye with cold fingers.

  “Puede que nunca vuelva a ver fuera de él, pero no lo perderá,” he said. He might not ever be able to see out of it again, but he won’t lose it. “Sin sangrado en el cerebro.”

  He patted my head as if I were a good dog, or an obedient and genial child. The soldiers allowed me to rise. I had run out of matches, but had cigarettes left. They ignored my begging for fire; Olympians denying humanity before Prometheus stole the flame.

  La dulce bruma del dolor. The Sweet Miasma of Pain . . .

  We are bits of meat in a watery broth. Sweet-tallow candles waiting to be lit. Pleasure makes us numb, stupid, inert. Pain sparks our wicks. The light and scent of pain—the greater the better—draws the attention of the mighty. The prodigious. The vast and numberless. And that frisson, between the pain, the effluent release of it, and the intention of the deliverers and emissaries, brings forth the miasma.

  I shit in the bucket, used the paper napkins to clean myself. The stink of it made me gag, retch. I wondered, amazed, at how unused I was to discomfort, despite my situation. The tooth they had shattered on la parilla, it caused my whole body to writhe and shudder with pain. Cleave’s doctor missed that, or more likely, didn’t care. Like a deranged homeless man, desposeído, I shouted at the walls for a dentist, a masseuse, a podiatrist. Laughing, I begged for my ophthalmologist.

  They did not come.

  Las manos de los fantasmas. The Hands of the Fallen . . .

  Under the door and waiting.

  They did not come.

  El señuelo de la inocencia. The Lure of Innocence . . .

  At the door, nothing but silence.

  Sobre el poder del incesto. The Power of Incest . . .

  I stopped translating. Wadded up the photos and tossed them aside. I bellowed my refusal to translate any more. Curling into a ball, I nested under the desk, aware of my cowardice—I did not tear the photographs into tiny pieces. I sobbed until unconsciousness took me. When I returned, absolute darkness. Careening questions rattled in what was left of my brain. Was I asleep? Had time utterly collapsed? When I could reason once more, I stood, and blackness hung all around. I touched my face, to see if my other eye was swollen shut as well, but found my injured eye had improved, the swelling had subsided and I could make out the ridges and contours of my ocular cavity. I took a step, barking my toe on something.

  In the dark, there is no time, just one moment, stalled out, breathless, that goes on forever. I counted the rising and falling of my chest until I reached a thousand. I held my breath, in hopes of hearing a footfall in the outer passage. A scream from some poor soul on the “grill.” Something to let me know I was still alive, and on the earth.

  Nothing.

  I don’t know how long I was like that. Five minutes. A month? All was dislocated. I tested the limits of the room blindly. I felt corners, the door. I gathered crumpled photos from the floor. I returned to the desk.

  Sitting down, my hands found the legal pad, the pencil, and a photograph. I said into the empty darkness, “I will return to work now.”

  The light flicked back on.

  Un pasaje a los sueños. A Passage to Dreams . . .

  Other places than these, shining with light from other suns. Flesh-filled worlds are a palace, a villa with many chambers, and with the right pretium, the most valuable pretium, one can extend oneself into the far halls and galleries by giving part of oneself up. An act of self-negation, closing oneself away from the living world purposely. Sacrifice of the seat of a sense.

  I tested the only exit, listening. I tried to peer underneath into the hall beyond. I could hear no patrol. It was as if I was alone in the building.

  “Cleave,” I said. “We need to talk.”

  “Not now, poet,” a voice immediately whispered on the far side of the door. So very close. “You have work to do.”

  El emisario requiere un recipiente. The Emissary Requires a Vessel . . .

  One shall prepare the way, chosen and marked, to cut through night. He will draw minions to him. The first bargain. The sunderer of veils.


  El mar se convierte en el cielo. The Sea Becomes the Sky . . .

  A tide, sweeping in, scouring the shore. A freedom for the mountains beneath the waves, inverting the sky, the darkness between stars. All will be loosed. Tearing the last sheets from the pads, I went to the door and slipped them underneath.

  Immediately I heard the bolt slide back. The door opened up, and Cleave stood before me, fresh as ever.

  “Come with me.”

  • • •

  I followed him through the building. I saw no soldiers, but there was such a presence about the man—a powerful remoteness—that I never considered attacking him. Instead of tunneling downward, he led me up myriad stairs, rising higher and higher, until I found myself coming into a half-lit, blue-gray world. A high stone patio, far above a city. Santaverde. The mountains stood at our back. Tattered wisps of clouds tore across the sky, driven by relentless wind from the sea. It was cold. Even though the outer world was dim, I blinked my good eye furiously in the blooming of light.

  “Poet,” Cleave said. “You have done good work, though some of your early translations were inelegant. Nevertheless, my counterparts are pleased.”

  “Your . . . The American president?” I said. “Nixon?”

  “Noooo,” he said, drawing it out. Then laughed. “Even my employers have masters. And they, I assure you, are well satisfied,” he said. “For now.”

  Something about that chilled and relieved me, all at once.

  “I have a place for a man of your . . .” I thought he was going to say “weaknesses.” He did not. He said, “talents.”

  “What about Alejandra? Can she—” I began.

  “Rafael,” Cleave said. He withdrew a cigarette and a lighter, cupped his hand around the end, and lit it. He took a long drag and then offered it to me. “May I call you Rafael?”

  “I don’t care, I just want—”

  “Alejandra is dead, I’m afraid,” he said. “I’m sorry it happened how it happened and I hope you’re not too traumatized by the—”

  “Traumatized? By what?” I said. “What could’ve traumatized me?”

  “You do not remember, and that is understandable. Our work has certain—” He withdrew another cigarette and held it in his hand, unlit. He gestured with the tan-speckled filter. “Amnestic effects.” He indicated Santaverde, which was spread out below us like a map on a table. The sky was dark and I could not tell if it was night or day. The lights of the city glowed in a feeble electric grid with large areas of blue-black darkness. Fires burned, and pillars of dark smoke rose crookedly up to higher altitudes where wind streams caught them and sheared away the tops of the plumes. From the city a haze rose, undulant.

  “What happened to Alejandra?” I asked. “What did you do?”

  No answer.

  “What did I do?”

  Cleave walked to the edge of the patio, rested his hands on the waist-high stone wall there. He looked out over Santaverde. “You see it, don’t you? The haze. The scent.”

  “The miasma,” I said without thinking.

  “Yes,” Cleave said. “Yes! It is pleasing, is it not? Think of the amount of suffering. We are almost there.” Cleave snapped his fingers and something changed, the world tilted. It was bright now, and a watery sun shone above. I could hear cars honking and the crackle of what sounded like gunfire below. Smells of sewage and burning tires filled the air. We had come out of collapsed-time. The sway of the miasma was broken. For the moment.

  Cleave turned. “Sepúlveda.”

  The lieutenant colonel stood near the passage we had come from, waiting. Two soldiers flanked him. “Señor Cleave,” he said. “The helicopter is ready.”

  “Perfect,” Cleave said. “And the sarin canister?”

  “On board,” he said. “The facility is ready in the north.”

  “Wonderful.” He turned back to me. “What do you say, Rafael? Are you with me?”

  “I don’t—” I said. “I don’t know what—”

  Cleave allowed himself to grin. “This is where I promise you things—things you want—and then you yield to temptation.”

  “Alejandra,” I said.

  Cleave sighed. “Anything except that. There is no bringing her back. Especially not for you, after what you did. Anyone else, we could—” He paused, thinking. “Work something out. Your mother. A sister? No?” He shrugged. “I’m very sorry, but we’re bound by certain rules and the hand that kills cannot be the hand that resurrects.” He gestured to the guards. “Think about it, Rafael. We have time, do we not?” He drew a huge draft of air into his nostrils. “Within the miasma, there’s all the time in the world.” He lit his cigarette. “Take him back to his cell. Give him food, drink. Let him think about it. Right, Rafael? You’ll think about it?”

  The soldiers looked at me dubiously. Maybe it was my lost, dumbstruck expression. Maybe it was that I didn’t move until they raised their rifles and nudged me back into the villa.

  The hand that kills cannot be the hand that resurrects.

  What have I done?

  What did they do to me?

  In the cell, once the guards were gone, I found they had not removed the photographs of the manuscript. An oversight, possibly. Another avenue to torture. They were valuable to Cleave, obviously. And they were what kept me alive and useful.

  I felt sick at the uncertainty of my role here, but ate the food and smoked cigarettes anyway. I pretended to sleep, but then slept. With no clock, no way to tell the passage of time, no indication that Cleave or the soldiers watched me in my cell—I was out of the miasma, the collapsed-time of torture, I had to assume Cleave’s frightening immediacy and surveillance had ended—I took up the photograph I had been thinking of since looking out at Santaverde, the thick haze rising up under the dark skies.

  Un pasaje a los sueños. A Passage to Dreams.

  From sojourner to journeyer, the pretium is dear; for the one rich in flesh, a measure of beloved filial blood, a hymen, a punctured ear. For the one poor in flesh, the egg, the eye, the stone, and nothing less. In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni. We turn in circles in the night and we are devoured by fire.

  So much more, long passages, swimming in my failing sight. Markings, Aramaic, Greek, Gnostic symbols. Rough drawings painted in blood: the hanged child, a man mounting a girl, a needle in an ear, a dagger in the eye. Blood-streaked phalluses slipping through viscera. Tongues split to the root. Images writhed and danced in the photograph.

  I stood, taking the magnifying glass in hand. I cast it down, on the floor. The brass ring around the looking glass pinged and broke, a spring suddenly releasing its tension. The glass skittered across the floor like a skipped stone and hit the wall. Scarred but unbroken. In my mind, with the impact, it would fracture into shards, but it remained whole. I snatched up the glass and placing it on the floor, raised the desk’s corner-leg up, nudged the glass forward with my toe, and let the desk’s metal foot fall, slamming down on the glass. I thought it would fracture into knifelike shards. It did not. The blow reduced it to glass powder.

  Sobbing, I beat the table until my hands were raw. I screamed and clawed at the door until my fingers were bloody tatters. I drank the vodka and swung at phantoms, bellowing for Cleave, for Sepúlveda. I cursed god, I cursed myself. I screamed for Alejandra. I screamed for any memory of what they made me do to her.

  Delirious, my gaze fell upon the brass ring that once held the looking glass. Picking it up, I tested the edge with my thumb.

  The hardest part was prying down the swollen lower eyelid so that the lip of brass could slip under the eye, into the ocular cavity. It met some resistance, gristly, tenacious sinews and fibers. Occipital ridge, blood welling, unraveling of the woven tissues, the tearing of the fabric of blood vessels and capillaries. I mouthed the words, over and over, backward and forward. The shock of pain spread. Yawing, I pitched forward, the floor flashing in my one good eye. I righted myself, unsteadily, working the piece of brass into my socket. A soft sucking pop
, as the eye came free, dangling upon its bloody stem. My brain sparked and flashed with occipital nerve death. Will I see things still, through those dead ends? The light overhead flickered and went out. I put the bloody eye on the desk, to stare balefully at any who entered. The pain was gone. I looked down at the stark contrast of blood on my chalky white skin. Shock. I am become a phantom. The walls stood indistinct. The cell, though dark, was not pitch-black—a pulsing scintillate haze floated through it, like a ghost’s trail. And . . . the door stood open.

  I took up the photographs in white, unsteady hands, and clutched them to my chest. I walked through the doorway, out into the far landscape beyond, mountains shifting in the distance.

  I wandered through lands I could not tell you of now; lands made strange by impossible geometries and vile arcologies my mind could not comprehend. I knew not how long I was there, how long I roamed that land, but when I was conscious again, I felt rough hands on me and I was being pulled from the cold, black shore of the Mapacho.

  • • •

  Men lifted me from the ground, dried my skin with rough woolen blankets. Pried loose my frozen hands from the sheaf of photographs. For days, my tongue failed me, aphasic once more, so close to the miasma. They took me to their fishing village, near the sea. A veterinarian tended to the ruins of my eye, silently. He’d seen men and women like me before—state-gnawed bones coughed up by the junta’s dogs and Vidal’s men, once their usefulness was over, cast into the Mapacho or the Palas. You are lucky to be alive, the men said. Laborers, stevedores, fishermen. Those workers who dallied with socialism, but never took up a book or attended any meeting. The hard memory of Pávez’s end was fresh among them.

  They took me into their houses, among their wives and children. This is Avendaño? The Avendaño?

  I do not know. I saw him once on the television, and he was fatter then.

  He can’t be Avendaño. Look at his face.

  Mary, Mother of Jesus, they hate poetry. Pinochet kills Neruda and Vidal mutilates Avendaño. Will all beauty in the world be extinguished?