by Laura Furman
“They do something to me,” Ray yelled. “They’re the only things that get me to sleep!”
“They fucking decerebrate you!” Christa turned to me. “Ray drives in his sleep.”
“I do not drive in my sleep!”
“Oh, you’re awake when you jump in your car at two a.m. and go tearing up the coast to see that loony anorexic bitch?”
“She is not anorexic—that’s just the way she looks! How many of those things do I have left now?”
“In one second you’re not going to have any,” Christa yelled, tearing out of the room after him, “because I’m going to flush them down—”
And then, happily, both of them were out of sight and earshot. So I helped myself to lunch, and it was all delicious. That night there was the first in a long series of freakish storms, and the sky erupted over and over into webs of lightning that crackled across the water and mountains and valley. Ray didn’t show up for dinner, and he didn’t show up the next day, either. In fact, he didn’t return for nearly a month, during which time Christa alternated between shutting herself up in the bedroom, pounding on my door to talk incoherently for hours, and scaring up whatever expats and aimless travellers she could, for wild parties that lasted days. I was pretty worried about her, especially when I realized she was taking not only Crestilin, but Levelal and Hedonalex, too.
When I could, I would hide myself away from the noise and confusion of the parties, and ask Marya for meals to bring to the little house for myself. And sometimes Amos and I would stand together at the kitchen window to watch the storms, and the fires springing up on distant slopes. And I would also sneak peeks at Amos, whose face reflected the flames as an entrancing opalescence, as if the light were coming from his lunar skin.
Ray was still gone, and one day Christa came to my room wearing baggy pajamas and carrying a huge armload of beautiful, beautiful dresses. “Here,” she said. “These are for you. I don’t want them anymore.” In her eyes, tears were welling and subsiding and welling. I took the clothes from her, and we stood and looked at each other, and then she turned away and was gone. Naturally, during that time, I thought about Graham quite a bit, and I longed not for him, but for the apparition he fell so far short of, which I called up over and over, and gradually wore away until there was nothing left of it, though the loss wasn’t exactly a nullity—I could feel an uncomfortable splotch marking its spot, like a darned patch on a sock.
I watched the ravenous flames devouring Ray’s eucalyptus, where there had once been small farms and living crops, and I was sorry that I hadn’t sent myself my paints and brushes. So Fred drove me to the nearest large town, where I spent most of the frisky money that had made me feel so powerful to acquire some passable materials.
We passed some donkeys on the road, sweet little gray things with eyes as black as Amos’s. “Donkeys!” Fred said affectionately.
Fred spoke only a bit of English, so I’m not sure exactly what he was telling me—I think it was that he had a wife and lots of children, and that his wife was a baker, who made the delicious pastries that Marya served every day, but that the price of flour was now so high that the remaining local people could barely afford to buy her bread.
Fred himself was an electrician, I think he said, but these days there wasn’t much paying work, so he had started to do any sort of thing he could for Christa and Ray, to make ends meet. I’m not sure, but I think he said that he was helping build a generator, too, for the little hospital in the area, and that there were sometimes electrical emergencies, so he had to drop whatever he was doing for Ray or Christa and go attend to the problem.
Anyhow, he was good at doing a lot of things, and he was kind enough to help me stretch some canvases. Accident had selected me to observe, in whatever way I could, the demonic, vengeful, helpless, ardent fires as they consumed the trees that had replaced the crops—to observe the moment when, at the heart of the conflagration, the trees that sustained it became phantoms, the fire’s memory.
In those days, I was neither awake nor asleep. The fires, the sea, the parties, Christa, Marya, Amos, and Fred wove through the troubled light, the dusk, the smoky, phosphorescent nights. The water had become rough and gray, and down by the shore a little group of shacks had sprung up, where people waited for a boat to appear on the horizon. Sometimes I thought of my former employer, Howard, just standing there, as I left, not looking at me.
I was getting fed; at home, so was my cat. I arranged to stay another month. Ray returned, and the wild parties came to an abrupt end, though now and again a fancy car would still roar up, and some flashy, drunken teenagers would tumble out at the door and have to be shooed away. I learned, online, that Zaffran had taken up with a young actor. The first few days Ray was back, he was irritable and silent, but soon he became cheery and expansive, as though he had achieved something of note, and Christa began to make plans to redecorate. “Would you like the dresses back?” I asked. “I don’t really have any place to wear them.”
“The dresses?” she said. She smiled vaguely, and patted me, as though I had barked.
Three weeks of drenching rains kept us all indoors, and by the next week, when the rain began to let up, I had completed almost what I could, and Amos was ready to run his show, which he was provisionally calling State of Emergency.
The dank fires were still smoldering, and several donkeys had slid into a ravine, where they died, heaps of blood and shattered bone, though no tourists had been hurt. With the help of Fred and some kids from the village, Amos had constructed a little theatre inside the main house, and we all settled in to watch—Christa and Ray and me, of course, and Marya, and a few Europeans and Saudis, who still had vacation places in the area, and a visitor from Jaipur, who designed software for a big U.S. corporation, and his elegant wife. I wore one of Christa’s lovely dresses for the occasion, the only one that didn’t make me look seriously delusional.
The curtain rose, over a vibrant and ominous bass line. You could hear the plashing of the alligators in the moat and the lethal tapping of the computer keys in the towers. A queasy buzzing of the synthetic string section slowly became audible as the murky dawn disclosed drone aircraft circling the skies around the castle. Fred had done an amazing job with the lights, and the set, with its beautiful painted backdrops, was so vivid and alluring that sitting there in front of it you felt as though you had been miniaturized and were living in the splendid castle, pacing its red stone floors among the silk hangings. In the caves, where the serfs and donkeys toiled, at a throb of the woodwinds, pinpoints of brilliant yellow eyes flicked open, revealing hundreds of upside-down bats.
Amos had made a makeshift recording in his own strange, quavering, slightly nasal voice, of all the vocal tracks laid over an electronic reduction of the score—the forceful recitatives, and the complex, intertwining vocal lines. As the conflict built toward a climax, the powerful despots—the king and queen, the generals, and the alligators in the moat—sang of rage and growing fears. The twilight deepened, and the hills beyond the castle grew pink. Small black blobs massing on them became columns of donkeys and serfs, advancing. The sound of piccolos flared, and Marya grabbed my wrist as a great funnel of dots swirled from the turrets and bats filled the sky, and Amos’s quavering voice, in a gorgeous and complicated sextet, not only mourned the downfall of the brutal regime but also celebrated the astonishing triumph of the innocents.
The curtain dropped, and there was a brief silence until Marya and I began to clap. The others joined in tepidly. “Nicely done, nicely done,” the man from Jaipur said.
“We love to have artists working here,” Christa said to his elegant wife. “It’s an atmosphere that promotes experimentation. Sometimes things succeed and sometimes they fail. That’s just how it works.”
“That was only the first act,” Amos said. “This is intermission.”
“Ah,” Ray said, grimly. “Well, let’s all have a stretch and a drink, then, before we sit down again.”
&nbs
p; “I’m afraid we won’t be able to stay for the second act,” one of the Saudis said. “An early flight. Thank you. It was a most enjoyable evening, most unexpected.”
So the rest of us had a stretch and a drink and sat down for the short second act.
The curtain rose over a blasted landscape. The bodies of the king and the queen swung stiffly from barren trees. With a moaning and creaking of machinery, the ruins of the castle rose unsteadily up from the earth. Heaps of smoking corpses clogged the moat.
Three generals, formerly in the service of the hanged royal couple and now in the service of the absent executives, appeared at the front of the stage. One sang of the dangers to prosperity and social health that the conquered rebels had represented. A second joined in, with a lyrical memory of his beloved father, also a general, who had died in the line of duty. And the third sang of a hauntingly beautiful serf rebel, whom he had been obliged to kill.
There was more mechanical moaning and creaking, and up from the earth in front of the castle rose a line of skeletons—serfs, bats, and donkeys—linked by heavy chains. The generals, now in the highest turret, swigged from a bottle of champagne, and as the grand finale, the skeletons, heads bowed, sang a dirge in praise of martial order.
The curtain came down again, heavily. There were another few moments of confused silence, and then Marya and I began to clap loudly, and the others joined in a bit, after which Marya disappeared quietly into the kitchen, to put out the scrumptious dinner she had prepared, and Ray stood up. “Well,” he said. “So.”
I rarely go to parties any longer, but I did go to one the other evening, and there were Ray and Christa, looking wonderful. The milling crowd jostled us together for a moment, and they each gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and moved on, not seeming to remember me, exactly.
In the morning, I called Amos, with whom I have coffee now and again, and we arranged to meet up that afternoon. He had just gotten back from touring The Hand That Feeds You in Sheffield, Delft, and Leipzig, where it had a modest success, apparently. “Gosh, I’d love to see that show again,” I said. “Yeah,” he said, “it’s changed. I’ve worked out some of the kinks, and of course I got together some people who can actually sing to record the music, but I can’t get it put on here. Too expensive. And my former producer says the stuff about serfs is cliché.”
He was thinner than ever, drawn, actually, and I noticed for the first time that his wonderful, pallid luster had dimmed. “Amos, hey, I really cleaned up with my last show,” I said. “Let me take you to a decent dinner.”
“Sure,” he said, in such a concertedly neutral tone that I realized I’d upset him.
“Wow, Christa and Ray,” I said, retreating to more comfortable ground. “I think about them sometimes, don’t you? It’s odd—no matter how you feel about a place, it’s as though you exchange something with it. It keeps a little bit of you, and you keep a little bit of it.”
“I know,” he said. “And the thing you mostly get to keep is leaving.”
A while after we’d both returned home, or so Amos had heard, the last of Ray’s eucalyptus trees had been torn out to prevent further fires, and then the bluffs collapsed, sweeping away the remaining huts of the village in mudslides, and Ray and Christa had shut up the place and left, shortly before it was torched. So we wouldn’t be seeing it again, obviously, and nobody else would, either.
And in fact it was hard to believe, as we sat there in the rather grubby coffee shop about halfway between our apartments, that the place had ever actually existed, and that Amos had first done his show there that evening when the rains finally stopped and the sky cleared and the stars came out and the moon made a path on the sea that looked as though it led straight to heaven.
No one had mentioned the show at dinner, but there was plenty to talk about that night anyway—a new drug against hair loss that was being developed in Germany, an animated film about space aliens that was grossing an immense profit despite its unprecedented cost, and a bestselling memoir detailing a teenager’s abusive upbringing that turned out to have been written by a prankster. And after we’d all had a lot of very good wine and Marya brought out an incredible fruit tart, the man from Jaipur stood to raise his glass and said, “Let us be thankful—let us be thankful for our generous hosts, for art, for this beautiful evening, and for the mild, sunny days ahead!”
Derek Palacio
Sugarcane
ARMANDO SHOULD NEVER HAVE taken on the boy, but the food lines were long, and despite being the town doctor, he was not privileged beyond the standard cup of sugar every Saturday. He had a jeep, no roof, paid for by the barracks, but he was allowed no passengers (other than the boy) and he could not drive the vehicle except on house calls to the base, which he made daily. He’d thought about taping boards where the windows should be and driving south to the city beaches on weekends, but he’d also thought about setting fire to his house, hiking to Guardalavaca, slipping into the ocean at midnight and trying for Duncan Town. The bad joke was most of the sugar left the island, and even if Armando could drive the jeep to another food station, he’d still have to produce a clean rations book, which his was not. People eyed him jealously when the truck sputtered by on uneven roads, but his luxury meant only that he could work longer hours and see patients farther away. So when a pound of raw sugar appeared five months ago in his mailbox with a note requesting an internship for the plantation manager’s son, Armando wrote back “yes” and “of course” while shoveling four teaspoons of amber crystal into his evening coffee.
But the boy, Eduardo, was thick in the hands, and recently he’d proven himself thick in the ears. Entrance exams were now sixteen days away, and the week before he confessed to not having read the books Armando had given him back in April. He said they were all lists and diagrams, and he was learning more by watching.
“You have to make the marks first,” Armando told him.
“I will study between now and then,” Eduardo replied, “and you will write a letter.”
José Martí could not write a letter that would justify Eduardo’s place in school. Not only did he shirk the books, but he was also rotten with patients, especially late in the long evenings when the two of them left the barracks and returned to the high town to see pregnant housewives, coughing toddlers, and fevered state laborers. Armando was trained as a surgeon, but the government made no distinction between physicians and specialists, and he saw anyone who ailed. Someone always had a fever. He’d tried telling Eduardo that many sicknesses could be frailties of the mind. He’d explained the little white capsules with a false name, Diocyclin, which he gave out to the ambiguously ill. He even broke one in front of the boy to show him how it was just water inside. He was trying to teach Eduardo that his job was to cure people, not just symptoms. But then Eduardo began to think that most patients were faking and made a game of proving their symptoms exaggerated. Just three days ago the boy had asked a lieutenant at the barracks to describe his pains more specifically and with greater detail.
“I see,” Eduardo had said during the consult. He’d stood in front of a soldier sitting on a stool and complaining of a sore throat. Armando had promised an easy interview to Eduardo that week.
“But can you describe what it feels like?”
Armando had raised an eyebrow at that and almost put an end to the charade, but the boy backed down when he heard the doctor stir. “ ‘Hot and tender’ are just a little vague,” Eduardo said. “If you can be more precise, I can better help you.” He shrugged and added, “I am still learning.”
The lieutenant coughed and said it felt like hot sand had been poured down his throat, and he couldn’t swallow for his life. Eduardo nodded in satisfaction, but then forgot to take the man’s temperature and Armando had to relieve him.
In the jeep he’d scolded Eduardo, yelling over the spitting engine to never second-guess a patient. If the symptoms were not there, he would find out during the examination. You cannot help them if they do not trust y
ou, he said. Eduardo had been quiet for the remainder of the day and followed Armando’s orders with a mechanical agency. A young girl said he pinched her too hard when taking her pulse, but that was all, and the next morning he was fine again.
A country boy, Armando often thought, and too accustomed to mules and sows. Eduardo prodded people like a horseman pokes a steer. Armando knew this from the beginning. He had been invited to the manager’s house after he wrote back “yes” and met the man and his son in the stables. The plantation was in the valley below Patalón and drew its water from two streams that started in the hills. The stables were large and could have entertained more animals, maybe once had, and the father, the manager, had stood just inside the barn, wearing a hat with a wide brim. He was short and his handshake was weak, but his black eyes cut into your chest.
“Eduardo is smart,” the manager had said. “He holds onto things like a barnacle to stone.”
Armando stood by the father then and watched Eduardo saddle a mule. He was quick with the cinch and knew to poke the ribs before tightening. They took Armando into the sugarcane but did not ride themselves. The father walked beside him, and Eduardo led the mule between the rows. Armando felt like an idiot, but said nothing. The father’s plantation was no small part of the country’s export, and the man sported a machete in a chipped leather holster attached at his hip.
“He was a fine student, but he had obligations here, so his scores were not as they should have been.”
“He doesn’t want to follow in your footsteps?” Armando asked.
“My older son is at business school and will return in the spring. This is his.”
Armando looked at Eduardo, but the boy didn’t flinch at his father’s words. He walked with his head up, never watching the ground, and he led the mule flawlessly over rocks and across small ditches.
“So a surgeon?” Armando continued, still watching Eduardo.
“He is good with his hands,” the manager replied. As if on cue, a rat in a nearby row scurried past. The mule bucked and whinnied. Eduardo turned quickly and grabbed for the bit, slipping his hand between the cheek and the curb chain. He pulled down hard until the teeth snapped shut. Armando did not have the chance to even consider falling off.