The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky

by John Hornor Jacobs

  Alejandra watched avidly, afraid of nothing. Ballo returned, dripping, to stand over the now empty body cavity of the pig, grinning, his avid expression mirrored in the men’s and women’s faces all around. I had this uncomfortable feeling. The pig lay splayed out on the rocks and pebbles of the beach, gaping, gleaming wet and red in the center. I could not look away. The terrible figure of a man, wearing a crown and bearing a sword, drenched in blood, wormed his way up out of the cavity, into the world of men . . .

  “Are you all right?” Alejandra asked, placing a cool hand on my arm.

  I broke from my reverie and led her away to leave Ballo to the slaughter. And to find something stronger to drink. I could not bring myself to eat any of the asado cooked that night.

  The translation was calling to me once again, seething in my subconscious, but now there was a reluctance to answer its call. Alejandra was my anchor. Alejandra Llamos, that was her name, I’m sure of it now. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my hands, and in them was the manuscript of Night Work. My mind was a chorus, caught in a refrain of Latin phrases, Gregorian echoes—so similar to Spanish. Just reading the untranslated words, I felt I could ascertain their meaning. Alejandra took to slapping me during moments when I would fade away, thoughts bound up in ancient poetry. Or sink to her knees and unbuckle my belt. Other days we spent on Perón’s fishing boat, drinking rum and casting metal-tipped lines and screaming when the silver, thrashing fish were pulled aboard. I grew a beard (then coming in white for the first time) and ate my weight in mackerel. Each night, I fell into bed stinking of sun and sea and fish. But I began seeing shadows moving, even in the day. No amount of sea and foam and drenching myself in the waves could make them go away. I began to take long walks to wear myself out, doing hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups to exhaust my body. Sleep eluded me.

  I was bleary. And worse, I was unaware of what was happening in Santaverde.

  I have tried to put it together, to assemble the puzzle of how they could have located me, since I was so far away in Santo Isodoro. My housekeeper? My publisher, who helped arrange the rental of the house in Estancia las Violetas?

  In the end, it does not matter.

  Four men found us one evening as the shadows were growing long over the beach, at our backs, the sky bluing. They looked, in my mind, like American GIs from the movies Battleground and Tora! Tora! Tora! I thought of the soldier holding stolen eggs in his helmet, constantly whipping them to keep them from congealing. Van Johnson. But these soldiers called for me in Spanish.

  “Avendaño!” they said, outside the door. A man on the street told them in a tremulous voice that I was not there, I was fishing and far out to sea, but I was foolish and did not want any man to lie for me. I was no coward. I was racked with bad dreams, and no soldier could frighten me.

  I threw open the door, saying, “Here I am, what do you want?” The soldiers looked at each other, amazed at my brazen appearance. Then one of the men struck me in the face with the butt of his rifle. It happened so quickly, I had an impression of movement and something growing in my vision. A pain blooming in my face and the peculiar sensation of falling. Peculiar because falling has always been a weightless freedom punctuated by a harsh reminder of gravity. The descent of Lucifer writ small. The soldiers bellowed something, but I cannot remember what. I do remember Alejandra screaming, and them dragging me to a rattling truck and the smell of diesel. I passed out of consciousness then so I do not know what horrors they might have inflicted upon Alejandra. I never saw her again, at least not in the waking world.

  Once I became transformed, once I had the greater sight, I did not return to look for her. I did not fight to find her. Alejandra Llamos, I am sure her name was.

  I was, and remain, a coward after all.

  4

  Avendaño in prose was even more frustrating than Avendaño in person. I put aside his manuscript, tidied the kitchen and his Moorish bedroom, and left the apartment.

  The next day, I called Claudia from my office, leaving a hesitant message on her answering machine. This is the Clod, leave words after the beep. The machine chirped, an unforeseen stage call. Performance anxiety in the least likely of places, my own office.

  “Hey, it’s Isabel. I’m—”

  What does one say? Other people, people who just blithely wander from situation to situation, talking, laughing, interacting, would know exactly what words to give voice to. Like a confidence man, throwing out a convincing line of patter. We are animals and much of communication is just soothing vocalizations, soft glottals and plosives, that indicate to other animals we do not intend harm, we consider them part of our tribe. Any meaning layered on top of that is just . . . extra. I found I could not make those animal sounds. “Sorry, I didn’t catch you. I wanted to talk,” I said, and then hung up. I gathered my notes and then went to class to lecture on Yesenia Pinilla and the pastoral imagery in her poems. Yesenia was from La Coronada, Magera. My home.

  Two days later I was reading in the Parque de Huelin, sitting at the bench where I first noticed The Eye. The day was bright and lovely, the scents of the sea fresh, and I felt at any moment Avendaño might stride right up and sit down, smoking a Bali cigarette, and begin a discussion of religious imagery in luchador films, or discuss the best part of a chicken to eat. (He says liver, I say thigh.) I watched mothers walking strollers, young men smoking. A guitarist busked somewhere out of sight, singing Elvis and Beatles songs in a very poor American accent.

  I was distracted. Two things warred in my mind. The first was Claudia. Our night together had been wonderful, and I wished I could talk to her without the complication of what I had begun to think of as a mating pressure. After sex, I had noticed (though I was not, essentially, a sex-driven person) that the other person in the equation often takes on a possessive demeanor, and something in that rankled me. Claudia, with her brazen ways, seemed brutish the morning after. I reacted instinctively, I think. I am a solitary being, though Avendaño would argue with me about that for hours. How did you know I was Mageran? How did I know you are? You’re part of a bigger fabric than you know, Isabel.

  And Avendaño’s testament kept popping up in my awareness during random moments. I might be on the beach, taking in sun, and look to the light shattering on its surface and think The sea dreams it is the sky.

  When the sky dreams, what does it become?

  In quiet moments, I wondered what Alejandra might look like, how she walked or the sound of her voice. In my mind, she began to resemble Claudia. At night, in those moments lying in bed and desperately trying to sleep when the mind turns to every terrible thing you’ve said, or done, and every terrible thing said and done to you, I would think of his poem “The Miasma of Soldiers.” I would think of the Vidalistas who came to take The Eye from his idylls and labors. Blood calls to blood, bad calls to bad, and through pain and sacrifice, we draw the gaze of hidden eyes of titanic movements beyond the stars. I did not know what it meant, or its significance, but part of me wanted to look at the Latin, and see if I could find a better meaning there than Avendaño did. I was exceptional in church, and school, and university—I was sure I could offer a better interpretation than The Eye.

  Such were my thoughts when Claudia appeared on the park’s far path, strolling along manicured flowerbeds and lush ferns. I raised my arm to hail her but stopped, seeing the woman she was with. A tall, gangly girl with bad posture but lustrous hair. Claudia spotted me, grabbed her companion’s hand and dragged her forward.

  “Hello, Isabel!” Claudia said, entirely too bright. “Catching up on your studies?”

  When I was young, I spent weeks looking into the mirror, coaching reluctant muscles into arching my eyebrows. I thought, if they were going to be so prominent, why not learn to use them to great effect? “What else would I be doing? Football?” I knew Claudia had played at the Universidad de Barcelona on a scholarship. “Every week brings new classes, with new lessons. How is your assistant teaching coming along?”

&nbs
p; “Wonderful! I have hammered home the Krebs cycle, and now we have moved on to aerobic and anaerobic pathways.”

  The woman with Claudia said, “Thirty-four ATP!”

  Claudia shook her head, frowning, and said, “No. Thirty-eight.”

  Ignoring Claudia, I put aside my Pinilla collection and stood. “Hello,” I said, extending my hand to the new woman. “I’m a friend of Claudia’s.” She was three, maybe four inches taller than me, tall enough that I could look up her nostrils and see the fine cilia crossed in a weave like the crown of a leafless tree. A peculiar enough view. She smiled, which made her face soften and her whole countenance brighten. She had sad eyes and I could see why Claudia was in her company. I felt as if a radiologist had just laid a heaven leaden vest upon me.

  “I’m Laura,” she said, taking my hand and shaking.

  “We’re going to Manuel’s for drinks,” Claudia said, still holding Laura’s other hand. Looking dead at me, she raised it and kissed the back. “Would you like to join us?”

  “No thank you,” I said. “I have to prepare for class tomorrow,” I said. I hastily packed my book into my bag and fled, wandering down the streets and alleys until, before I knew it, I had returned to Avendaño’s apartment.

  When I opened the door, I saw the tomcat. He sat in Avendaño’s reading chair, one leg up, licking his balls. On my entry, he looked up from his testicular occupation and stared at me with one large, yellow eye. The other was milky white. There were notches on his ears—due to territorial battles with other males, most likely—and his fur possessed a latticework of bare stripes, more testament to his bellicose nature. His tail had been gone for years. He was quite large and I stopped in my tracks once I saw him.

  Eventually, he looked away and, rising, he stretched and hopped down from the chair and padded toward me. He brushed past my leg, pressing into me, his back rising to lean on my calf with his full weight. Silent. He circled me once and then walked back into the apartment, out onto the balcony. I followed, so I could keep him in view. He leapt up, onto the narrow cast-iron grating, and vaulted onto a nearby roof covered in red ceramic tile. The tomcat gave one last glance and then with an absolute insolent stride, walked up the roof, out of view.

  Bemused, I turned back to the entryway. There were only two new pieces of mail, one obviously an advertisement. The other was addressed to me. I opened it.

  Dearest Isabel,

  I’ve arrived safe in Buenos Aires, and have bought a cheap Volkswagen Beetle like one I had long ago, before the heavens fell. I thought I might rent a Jeep, but no one here in Argentina will rent to a one-eyed man intending to travel to Magera. There is much anti-Vidal sentiment and very dark rumors of ANI and the influence of Vidal’s secret police extending beyond borders. Ever since Alfonsín took over after the Junta government, Argentina has come to its senses and eyes its neighbor with great suspicion.

  I’m writing you now from Córdoba, where my wife’s family is from. They have not heard from her since the coup, so many years ago. I have a rather mixed reputation here in Argentina, and am not very welcome so I must continue on. I leave tomorrow for the push into Magera. I must decide whether to try and cross near Santaverde or take a more northern route and cross over the mountains near Cascavel. I am favoring the latter, since word has it that the border near Santaverde teems with carabineros with a direct line to the secret police.

  I would like to schedule a phone call with you for November 12, at 6 p.m. I will call my apartment. If you would be there to answer, I would appreciate it. There is a telephone beneath my bed, and a jack for it in the kitchen.

  Whatever mail you find, please open. I’m expecting some checks from my publishers, and you may deposit them in the Bank of Barcelona on the Calle Passasuego. Just bring your identification; I’ve left word with them you will be acting as my agent.

  I miss our conversations and our time together.

  Feed the cat, for your protection. If you read my books, do not be too hard on me. There are manuscripts in my apartment that should remain unread, now that I think about it. Some knowledge is better off unknown.

  Your friend,

  The man was outrageously annoying and endearing by turns, I decided, but I worried for him. ANI was rumored to have killed thousands and tortured ten times that. And he was driving toward them.

  I went through his other mail. My English is passable, my German weak, and my French deplorable. However, it was not hard to make sense of the correspondences. One of the letters from America was from another Mageran exile, a poet and scholar who obviously had a great friendship and familiarity with the supposedly dead Avendaño, writing for advice on how to advance his career. The second letter was friendly as well. Possibly overly friendly. It came from a woman who was quite explicit in the erotic actions she wished to perform upon The Eye. From context I inferred they had a long and robust correspondence. Her heartfelt and lascivious entreaties were working toward a meeting, if Avendaño would only see it. He probably did. There were three checks from publishers nestled among labyrinthine sales reports—one from France, one from Germany, and the other from Britain—totaling over twenty thousand pesetas. More adverts and promotions.

  The two letters from Magera, addressed to Rafe Daño, I opened last. The first was a response from the Magera Minister of Licenses and Business Permits, a José Blanco, stating there was no record of Bella Avendaño, Isabella Avendaño, or Isabella Campos. But, Señor Blanco wrote, he would love for Rafe Daño to come to his office so they might discuss his interests in missing persons more in depth.

  I shivered. Something about the phrasing affected me on a physical level.

  Putting that aside, I opened the last letter. It contained a single slip of paper.

  -20.518097, -67.65773

  Alejandra

  * * *

  I never really returned to my life before meeting The Eye, such as it was. With the arrival of his letter, my connection to Málaga, the university, and everything else in Spain became tenuous. I taught classes, but just as a way of marking the days until the twelfth of November. I found myself spending more and more time at Avendaño’s apartment and less at my own. I bought tuna and kibble for the cat; I withdrew the phone from under his bed and plugged it in in the kitchen. I deposited his checks and was surprised when the teller directed me to a handsome woman’s office where I was greeted warmly and handed ten thousand pesetas (roughly one thousand American dollars) in an envelope, stating it was the standing instructions of Rafael Avendaño that his agent receive a monthly stipend.

  “Trust me,” she said. “Mister Avendaño can afford to be generous.” I took the money. How easy it was to travel down that road. Had The Eye dressed up in a scarlet suit, pitchfork aloft, leaping to a rooftop to be illuminated by fire and twirling his mustache, he could not have corrupted me more easily. Hell must be filled with poor academics.

  On the twelfth, I waited in his kitchen, watching the hands of the clock slowly turn. At six, the phone remained silent.

  I called in sick to work the next day and remained at Avendaño’s, waiting expectantly for the phone to ring. I went to the landlord and arranged for him to telephone the apartment while I was there, to check and see if the ringer worked. While I was out, I had an anxious dread that the phone would ring while I was gone. When I returned, even though I had arranged the call with the landlord, I nearly screamed from the sound of the rotary’s bell, I was wound so tight. My unease regarding my friend increased.

  Part of The Eye must have leeched into his apartment. I began smoking more frequently—something I rarely did—and drinking even in the day. I bought a message machine for when I left the apartment to teach classes. I rarely went to my office at the university and returned to my own room only to pack my belongings and move them into Avendaño’s. I warred with myself: agitated yet distracted, worried yet conflicted, lonely yet connected to this strange, foolish old man.

  Again and again, I found myself returning to his writings.
Of the translation Avendaño had begun, I continued, since my Latin was fresher than his, despite my having never translated Metamorphoses whole. I searched his apartment for his Ovid manuscript, but failing to find it, settled for reading The Eye’s poetry and A Little Night Work. The latter was gruesome and disturbing in ways I cannot, even to this day, put into words. Of the themes contained (as far as I could tell) in that work, two stood very prominent:

  The first was that of sacrifice, of blood, of life, of innocence. Of value. I began to understand why it had been hidden inside a sheaf of pornography. I am no dullard; I recognized this was a profane book, a book that would be destroyed or locked away by the Catholic Church (or any other) if they had come across it. Those with it in their possession would find themselves excommunicated, swiftly and without any red tape. A Little Night Work hid its true nature in oblique verse, and stilted and antiquated Latin, but it was most definitely a book of witchcraft, or black magic. The stories contained within, and their rudimentary yet evocative illustrations, were more like primers for bargaining with unseen forces rather than spells.

  And while sacrifice was the predominant theme, the secondary theme was that the fruit of sacrifice was one of entry. “Ingressus” was used over and over. As was “liminal.” The descriptions of violence, and incest, and self-mutilation became like wounds in my mind, festering. At night, I could not sleep, and in the day, I moved through the streets of Málaga in a dreamlike state, as I had not slept the night before, cotton-headed and dull.