“I’m sorry—at the time, I had no idea he was in love with someone.”
“Huh—and he didn’t even try to pursue all the options. Glad someone was decent enough not to waste my time.”
“Like that guy you told me about?”
“Let’s not talk about him. As for Diego—he’s a good guy. I got angry at him though.”
“A-aw.”
“It’s just that we were really hitting it off—did you see that drawing he did of me?”
“No, I didn’t.” Cara’s eyes glinted with surprise.
“He’s very talented. He wanted to give it to me—as a gift. I was mad and told him to keep it—now I wish I’d kept it.”
“I’ll sketch you sometime.”
“You’re an artist?”
“Yeah—I like to draw.”
“What a talented family. So who’s Diego in love with?”
“A co-worker—she’s got problems. I guess Diego is waiting for the right time.
“She Asian?”
“Yeah.”
“Diego has good taste,” Priscilla laughed.
“I met her. She’s really nice—she wants to help me with my education.”
“So tell me, why did you have that meltdown at work today?”
“Oh, I just hate people invading my privacy—my stepfather once came into the bathroom while I was taking a shower—that’ll probably creep me out for the rest of my life. Being videotaped at my old job—I feel like big brother is always watching. Sorry to bother you with all this.”
“Glad you can confide in me. I guess I can sort of be your shrink. I’m a programmer—I have to debug stuff all the time. Every system needs to be debugged. I wonder what’s more complicated—computers or people—probably people—right?”
“I guess. I’m glad you came tonight. I probably won’t be your coworker for long. I’m gonna look for another job. I’ll be starting school in the fall.”
“I’m gonna miss you,”
“I’ll miss you too.”
Chapter Twenty Six
Late in the evening, Octavio was reading from an anthology of poetry. It was the large paperback with scraggy edges that he had kept from his junior college days. He remembered his professor once telling the class that when a person reads poetry, they should be so moved as to faint. Octavio had never even felt close to experiencing such appreciation of art or loss of consciousness. For many years, he had read the book, hoping that one day the poetry would speak to him.
Alex was a much better student. Octavio envisioned him finishing college and going much further. Octavio remembered the time that Alex tried to explain the first law of thermodynamics, that energy could not be destroyed. He postulated that consciousness was energy, and when we die, it also could not be destroyed. Yes, Alex was very smart, but poetry? Maybe that was Cara’s dominion. She was in touch with her emotions. Perhaps her life was made of perpetual fainting.
Octavio read about the Ancient Mariner and the sailors who had been trapped by the Doldrums:
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
The words reminded him of his life in Afghanistan, precarious surroundings painting a spiritual rut. And inevitably, his thoughts turned to his own father, the old naval officer, the ancient mariner of his life, the one people had referred to as El Viejo—the old man.
He remembered what El Viejo had once told him—that hell was circular—that they had designed it that way. It was hard to believe that there was a worse place to be than Afghanistan, but his father was proof that a worse hell actually existed. Afghanistan was merely a beautiful country with beautiful people that happened to be at war. But El Viejo’s account of the Presidio Modelo in the Isla de Pinos, the second largest of the Cuban islands, had left him forever an optimist, grateful that his suffering in this life would be limited.
On this island, in the 1960’s, THESE THINGS WERE TRUE:
There were windows in the underworld with a view of paradise—a tropical sanctuary caressed by poetic mountains and the scent of salty sea air by which one could almost allow the heart to be conquered, if one could only smell past the stench of human bodies—bodies that produced a sweat that was no longer fluid but something dry and grotesque, a humiliation to Cubans who treasured bathing and personal hygiene.
Outside—a spiritual sanctuary—the bright blue canopy of sky, pine forests and pastures. And not far away, the black sand of Bibijagua, a cruel seduction to those trapped within the dark circle, unable to enjoy truths, rhythms and renewal—save for the times they were taken out to work in the fields, to be beaten by men with clubs, to be gashed by bayonets. Pale hapless prisoners could look out their windows to see a beautiful world that—like a Chinese garden—invited the soul to have its deepest desires fulfilled.
There could be no escape from unseen, all-knowing eyes in a panoptical building, only the plain realization that one is naked before the turret. Each of the four rondels had one—a weak source of light during dark and deadly nights filled with the sounds of executions.
The guard tower was like a silent and abusive giant whose stare caused inevitable delirium, and after the unimaginable years—the psychological effects of the column standing in the center of the round building had severely damaged El Viejo’s spirit. The human heart craves a certain amount of privacy—secrets—and fears above all else the prospect of madness.
Like a domed coliseum, five floors of humanity were forced into small-overcrowded filthy cells with insect drenched bunk beds and overflowing toilets. There were one hundred cells on each floor with iron bars framing the view of paradise as well as the sight of rifle barrels emerging from slits in the tower.
Many of the coughing, malnourished prisoners slept on cold floors where water dripped from leaks in the wooden conical roofs. Fainting spells from life threatening low blood pressure were common, the result of their squalor. The subhuman conditions and contaminated food and water at the prison caused a bacterial infection that had been eating away at El Viejo’s stomach. His pain was as infinite as the boundaries of the soul and confirmed that God was distant and needed to be summoned. El Viejo welcomed death and cried out to God and sometimes to San Lázaro, to intercede on his behalf.
After days of vomiting blood, the prison guards decided to allow El Viejo medical attention. His bleeding ulcer required the removal of half his stomach. This was done without anesthesia. He bit on a filthy pillow during the operation to cope with an even more horrendous agony. His screaming seemed part of a symphony of sounds—sounds which included thousands of inmates singing hymns in unison while guards mercilessly beat them and fired their weapons at them. The killing, tortures and dehumanization—the pain of a razor tearing at his stomach, made El Viejo want to call for an end to this world.
Sometime after his operation, it was decided that El Viejo would not have to serve the remainder of his thirty-year sentence. He would be free. Free to come to the United States to be with his exiled family. Free to heal as much as life would permit. Free to be Octavio’s father. Yet freedom does surprisingly little to rescue the souls of men tormented by emotional suffering. And as the medieval poet who journeyed into the underworld once correctly observed, the sun is hard to see behind the mountain.
As a child, Octavio expected his father to scream every night in his sleep. He grew up knowing a father who never laughed or smiled. One day, as a teenager, Octavio went to visit his father in the hospital and was startled by the emptiness in his eyes, the panic and terror. After what El Viejo had experienced in the Presidio Modelo, was it only a matter of time until he would lose his sanity? Had El Viejo experienced the six months in the gaveta?—the rectangle of death—or La Ratonera? A few days later he died. The doctors said that there was nothing physically wrong with him, except that he was depressed.
Octavio understood that his depression was different from his father’s, but also that it wa
s the result of psychological trauma. Hopefully, Cara and Alex would not inherit such a cruel despair. Perhaps every generation would know less pain. Octavio could leave this world, satisfied, believing it might be true.
...
The next day there was another ambush. Beyond the wrinkled red earth, mortars were being launched from the mountains. A long convoy of pickup trucks waited on the road—ANA soldiers outside their vehicles, taking cover behind the tires as Taliban shot at them. The rapid crackling of rifle fire and rockets raining upon them were answered by the machine guns of those who fought back from behind their trucks, many with the audacity to stand upright.
Octavio shouted, hoping his English would be understood by the young men that could sometimes be seen smiling and laughing in the exchange of war. “We have to deliberately draw fire, so we can pinpoint where they are!”
Between the whizzing of projectiles that flew past, he heard the angry drone of a rocket-propelled grenade. The grave sounds told him that this was unlike the many daily attacks, the situation had become critical—they were outnumbered and being smothered by the enemy.
“You like Afghanistan?” asked an ANA soldier.
Octavio smirked and noticed other marines laying down mortars two trucks away, Underwood frantically shouting, “Right there! Right there! Right there! Yeah that’s it! No-no! Where are you aiming?”
“I don’t know!” shouted another Marine.
“Figure that out before you aim, dumbass.”
“Well, that’s comforting,” Octavio said. “Should’ve known this would get bad when we saw the villagers leaving the area—always a sign that the Taliban are moving in.”
Bullets were screeching closer, making tearing sounds through the air. Octavio also fired his weapon at an enemy he couldn’t see. They should be here soon—how long ago did we call in the air strike? Octavio wondered. He turned to the ANA soldier nearest him. “How can your guys fight while they’re stoned on hash?”
“How do you prefer they fight?” he said.
“Whatever works for them—where ya from?”
“Kandahar.”
“I like Kandahar.”
The soldier was almost about to smile, when the two heard moaning from an ANA soldier with a bullet wound. Not again, Octavio thought—forcing his mind not to feel, but instead to become subdued with rational thoughts. I’m well trained—I know what to do—I can handle the stress—main thing is to focus and get everyone out of here alive. Block out emotions. That’s the key.
Octavio leaned back to see who had been shot. A young man lay on the dirt, covering his head with his arms. For a brief moment, Octavio saw the wound—a red dot with a thin stream that ran down his leg. His mind and body reacted with the instantaneous decision to run toward the wounded soldier. As he was sprinting the distances between trucks, he heard the whistle of a rocket-propelled grenade. The sight of Underwood being decapitated dismantled something within Octavio. An edifice of confidence and self-assurance vanished, leaving Octavio an orphan of faith. His sprint reduced to sauntering.
Octavio’s realization of the need to run full sprint again was met with a shockwave from an explosion that threw his body hard against the ground, leaving him briefly unconscious. His mind gradually rebooted. This new awakening seemed to be in a different world. His ears were ringing, and the landscape no longer seemed brown, but completely colorless. He stood and noticed another soldier who had been even closer to the blast, disoriented and stumbling with small amounts of blood coming out of his nose and ears.
And then he felt it. The angry snap of metal that had been heaved from the mountain. For a moment, Octavio wondered if he, also, had been decapitated. A bullet had found its way into his neck, mocking his body armor. His deafness had replaced the sounds of war with the thrashing of his heart. The pain and taste of blood in his throat made Afghanistan, for the first time, seem like the most remote place in the world. He even had the impression that he wasn’t in that part of the world at all, but somewhere far from man where only God patrolled the land and sky.
He fell to the ground. Lying on his back, no longer involved in the fury of war, he reached into a pocket in his combat fatigues and felt the soft fabric of the baseball jersey rolled into a scroll. Thoughts of his children would fill his final moments on earth. He took the jersey that he would never wear, and felt himself wanting to cover his wound with it, but decided it would dishonor the sacred gift. He inhaled once more and exhaled what remained into the wind that took the shroud and blew it away to be swallowed up by the desert.
As the evening grew dark there was a break in the clouds. One star appeared and then vanished. The most recent band of showers had produced enormous waves. Another rafter had been lost, unable to hold on to the dragon slithering across the expanse. The men stared at each other noticing their cuts and bruises, frightened by mutual hopelessness.
One of the men blurted out, almost in annoyance.
Go on with the story, but don’t mention anything about war, politics or prisons, or that sort of thing.
The storyteller, with swollen eyes and trembling lips gave the man a hateful look.
We’re past all that. Prepare yourselves, for what I have to say next is completely without violence or opinions or cleverness of any kind, and yet it is the darkest of all truths.
Chapter Twenty Seven
That morning, Adriana woke to tears on her pillow. Her new roommate in the rehab clinic had been going through withdrawals all night but was suddenly still, staring at Adriana like she had seen the face of God. Before she noticed the head-shaped ring of moisture she was overcome with a sorrow she had only felt one time before—the day she and Tavi decided to separate. She forced herself out of bed, and the moment she left the room the tears began to stream down her face. Her chest heaved, a hot balloon seeming to inflate and deflate within her, tears gushing from her eyes. She forced down her medicine but refused to eat, and in group sessions, where she normally was very open and engaged the newer people, today she was silent, trying desperately to hold back her sobs. In the middle of the afternoon session she excused herself and went back to her room. Sitting on the edge of her bed, it was the first time all day that she had no tears left to cry. There was only a sadness that weighed her down like she was buried under a mountain of corpses.
A counselor entered her room, her hands passively cupped over her waist.
"Adriana, I have some bad news."
"I need to call my daughter."
"It's about your ex-husband."
"I know, I felt him leave me this morning."
…
Diego heard the wailing coming from one of the guest rooms, jumped out of bed and frantically dressed himself. He could see the outline of the door glowing with the presence of precious life within his home. He ran out of the room toward the source of the crying, and found Cara laying on her side against the wall in her room, her cell phone close by—laying on the carpet as if it had been dropped. Her entire being convulsed with sorrow, her mascara smeared and muddied in tears, her nose running.
Diego dove to his knees and Cara met his gaze with her mouth open, waiting to hear her own words, which seemed inaccessible. Her eyes were desperate and anxious—eyes of a person betrayed by life—heartbroken and left for dead—a type of discarnate death. Diego had seen that expression before, but couldn’t remember where—perhaps in the faces of those baffled by their lovers—forsaken by uncaring skies empty of heavenly realms.
He could almost have preferred that she remain in hysteria so that he could try to calm her. Her staring, hollow eyes revealed a new territory—a quality beyond pain—a purging and purification. Hadn’t she been through enough? Had she not evaded bitterness thus far in life?
Diego held Cara’s hands and fearfully asked her to unveil the answers. “What happened, mi sobriñita?”
Cara hesitated before speaking and then sobbed her answer, “Dad—is dead,” her voice cracked like a branch in a storm. She said the word
dead as one would whisper a word forced by an interrogator. Hearing herself acknowledge her father’s death brought on a new wave of weeping.
Diego shuddered at having caused Cara to carve at her own wounds. Diego sat next to Cara, holding her close—his sleeve soaking in the tears.
“Your Mom called you—and told you?”
Cara nodded.
“She didn’t want to talk to me?” Diego asked—trying not to sound like his question mattered.
“I-I-I told her I’d call her back.”
“Where’s Alex?”
“Down in the gym.”
Diego at that moment wondered how he could handle the grief of two young people under his care. He wished for a little more time alone with Cara—to stabilize her enough to deal with Alex. No more questions—don’t even try to say anything comforting, he thought. Just like funeral services—it’s better to hold someone than to have something to say.
Cara clung to Diego’s arm—her eyes, looking intoxicated and heavy, stared into some place that allowed her mind to taste the hurt. She’s dealing with it—don’t repress it—it’ll be a good sign if she doesn’t shut it all inside.
Diego noticed that she was adorned for the evening in a gray crinkled chiffon dress wearing her hair in an up-do. He wanted to ask her if she had gone out—had a nice time. What an absurd question to ask. Just as the bracelets and bangles he had never seen before, Cara was much like a strange woman, yet reminded him a little of his sister. I will hold her as long as it takes—until Alex comes—then we’ll tell him.
He felt his sleeve on the edge of his shoulder getting wet enough to wring, and was glad that he couldn’t see Cara’s face anymore. He felt his own eyes welling up. He had known so many with sadness and he wondered which was better, to be lonely or sad, but then he realized this wasn’t sadness at all. Sadness lasts for a while, but a javelin thrown through the heart is a type of immediate death.
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