“Hey—are you saying I’m not sexy?”
“You’re very sexy—just don’t be an artist. My uncle Diego was a very successful man, but he was also an artist—I think the artist part of him somehow led to his destruction.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. Don’t ask me to explain—just don’t be complicated.”
The next day, they drove back in the other direction across the Keys. Cara looked at the old unused highway that ran parallel to the seven-mile bridge and thought of her old life—how it too had been battered by hurricanes—how it had been discarded for the new. In the rusty structure that was at one time an overseas railroad and now used as a fishing pier, she found a metaphor for old life and new life and the possibility of regeneration for the heart.
Chapter Thirty Two
Ling Woo’s implacable mood eventually lessened. One day when she thought that she had reached the depths of her sorrow—a point at which it seemed that she could not be any sadder and live—the pain mysteriously went away. Like the jade undertones in a portrait—grotesque, hidden and necessary, the years of severe depression were part of the unfolding of her life, a long night that caused her to awaken as a beautiful person.
She took a summer off one year to travel, searching for the landscapes she had seen in Diego’s paintings. Convinced she had found one of his peaks, Ling decided to explore a volcano on a remote island archipelago. She trekked through bamboo forests, encountering thousands of green and gold bamboos. A divine breeze, high in the canopy, interlaced the bamboo back and forth in the sunlight of an emerald cathedral. She almost had to wonder if it was all a dream, if she grinned too hard, she would awaken from it.
At the end of the trail, she came upon a waterfall hundreds of feet high that seemed to pour out of the sky. She hopped several large rocks and went for a swim at the turbid base of the waterfall, drunk with euphoric laughter. She noticed a distant storm receding like a ship, topaz lightning flaming the evening sky far out at sea.
The next day, she set off to conquer the mountain, a massive dormant volcano eclipsing a third of the sky. She climbed a narrow path without guardrails. Tremulous and clinging to the rocks, she skirted goats and cattle as pebbles fell off the cliff and into the clouds. She reached the icy summit, but wanted to keep climbing. There’s no more mountain, she said to herself. There’s nothing left to conquer.
And so she walked into the crater, passing large cinder cones, marveling at the alien looking soil on top of the world. She followed a trail carved into an ancient dry lava flow down the side of the mountain, amazed the entire way by the beauty of the island. She thought of the old African proverb: Everything has an end. Everything has an end. Then she thought of Diego, and wondered why there had never been a beginning, only a text message. She thought the words—I’m all yours would search him out for all eternity.
Ling kept her promise, and one day introduced Cara to Caravaggio. The final lesson came in the form of an article she had once written for an art publication. She sent the magazine in the mail along with a short note: To my greatest student, Cara, read page 24.
In the article entitled, Caravaggio – Please Break My Heart Again, Ling imagined what it was like to be one of the scores of young painters who adored Caravaggio, the artist who despised all laws and conventions. There were many such devotees who considered each of his paintings a miracle. What must it have been like to get close to Caravaggio, Ling mused, only to see him tear up his canvases at the slightest smattering of criticism—to befriend the genius, and then discover that he was an outlaw? What would his disciples think of his need to sleep fully armed? And what of his violence, his constant brawls? Caravaggio had once killed a man, although some said it was not intentional. And what of his strange disappearance? Some said he died of a fever. Others said that one day he sailed out to sea and vanished, leaving behind treasures, the world a better place, and lovers, forever grateful for having had their hearts broken.
...
The Grace Quintessence was sailing the Florida Straits one cloudless day. The vessel anchored safely away from a reef where a pod of bottlenose dolphins had been spotted—a mother and her calves. Cara and Matt sat on the edge of the yacht.
“Remember, these are wild dolphins,” Matt said. “Don’t get too close. They don’t like the bubbles. Don’t harass them. Don’t ask them if they have any fetishes.”
Cara laughed.
“Okay, regulator in mouth, other hand behind your head.”
Cara leaned back into the warm water and swam out a short distance, slowly deflating her buoyancy control jacket and moving her fins gently back and forth. Above her she soon saw the silhouette of a dolphin eclipsing the sun, beneath her, a pure land of coral gardens.
Cara thought of the tiny islands they had seen that day. She thought of herself as one of those islands, Matt as another island. She thought of every person in the world as an island. Then she thought of the ocean floor and how all the islands were interconnected, how there were really no islands at all, but instead, all things were coalescing into one terrain. If only all these islands could fall in love, then they would never be apart again. Yes, this makes sense—all the unconfessed love of this world, all the things that make us one, hidden like the ocean floor. Perhaps I had been stuck in my own head for too long. Maybe there is nothing really that separates us.
She thought of the next life, surely we would be eternally covered in love—in a place where no one was isolated like an island. Somewhere in a new day, in a new world, Cara could see her father admiring photographs of his precious Adriana, eternally aware that he always had her love, her warmest wishes, her deepest friendship, her voice being carried to him by a mysterious zephyr that travels to other worlds, assuring him that he would be forever covered in her love.
Somewhere in a new world, Diego was exhibiting his landscape paintings in a gallery filled with lovers of hues and brushstrokes. He spoke, knowing that all listening would hang on every word—his theories—his inspiration. He informed them that he had known a woman so beautiful that portraits would never be able to capture her impalpable riches. In his landscapes, in the wind, in the ancient mountains, in the mist and ash, there was love. Love could be the only response to Ling, the very aroma of heaven.
He told the lovers of hues and brushstrokes that he had been in a state of denial regarding his own melancholy. He had been overcome by sadness—just like Ling—but now in a new world could not comprehend what sadness was. He felt Ling’s arms around him, her hands over his heart, a heart that had been newly formed like desert dunes by beach sand. Ling had always been with him and her love would forever accompany him.
Cara could only imagine that these things were all true, in a new day, in a new world—that Octavio and Diego would both know satisfaction and peace as wide as the expanse between heaven and earth. For they both had something in common—they loved much—a kind of love not understood well on earth. They had been fortunate enough to catch faint glimpses of God through loving the things they weren’t meant to have.
In the warm water, Cara felt born anew—once again in the amniotic fluid of her mother’s womb. As she let herself float back to the surface, she was eager to reenter her dream, and ignore the poet’s admonition to feed deep upon the peerless eyes of melancholy. Although the mistress had shown some rich anger, for Cara this story about sadness would end well.
The bodies floated like pads in a lily pond, shark torn and decomposing, over an area of many miles. Human rights activists, no longer able to endure police harassment, had failed to reach the Keys. Those who attempted such a voyage were often met with helicopters, dropping sandbags to sink their weak vessels. A storm seemed like an opportunity for escape; the government’s gunboats wouldn’t be as vigilant. After a few days out at sea, the pounding waves battered them with great violence. They all died clinging to old tires and chunks of styrofoam, each under a unique and spectacular sky.
In time, rela
tives mailed cotton swabs to Miami, hoping that their deceased loved ones would be identified by means of DNA testing. But no amount of testing ever reveals the mysteries of the heart. Perhaps, like Caravaggio, they had sailed away, irrationally, driven like artists. Or perhaps all of their illusions had been shattered long ago, and knew there was nothing good in their world and were searching for another.
Twenty two days before, a man who admired their cause had assured the group of seven that the raft was a good vessel. The voyage would be difficult. The skin on their arms and legs would be literally burned off by the sun. In some places, their bones would be exposed. Their backsides would be covered in sores. But they would survive, and if they weren’t comatose, it would all be worth it in the end—after all, the North Americans didn’t restrict Internet use, and there would be plenty of delicious food. And most importantly, they would never live in fear of speaking their minds again.
He promised them that the days out at sea wouldn’t seem that long—he would keep them well entertained with stories of painters and poets and beautiful women.
Parables are lies that teach us the truth—he told them.—If you’re ever going to know the truth, then someone must lie to you!
Such a grandiose observation could only be inspired by the cataclysm of his marriage. But how he loved his wife and how fortunate he felt to have known her touch. A farewell would be his ultimate gift to her. Her freedom, his heartbreak. Her happiness, his final accomplishment. Before the voyage, he went home and made love to her one last time, devouring her like forbidden fruit. It was strangely restorative, delighting in the warm body of someone who resembled an angel, someone who for a nocturnal moment seemed to remember how to love him.
That night, as she slept, he kept a vigil over her naked being, savoring their last moments together. Her breath sounded like the ocean surf against the beach, her heart beating softly with secrets. He cried when he thought of his children growing up without him. He thanked life for its brief pleasures and then prepared himself to enter the dark pit of the sea, terrified of the unknown, yet captivated by the possibility of finding something sublime.
He thought of the friends he would leave behind, the memories at El Malecón, the singing and laughter. Only on a Caribbean island can there be such rustic friendship between neighbors. Tavi and Adriana seemed so much in love, as did Diego, and la Chinita, Ling.
He thought of his employers, the beautiful Americana, Miss Janzovich and her novio, the Russian, who went by the name Belarenus. They managed a hotel on the beach, well aware of the haphazard nature of police surveillance and government software, and thought nothing of letting him use a computer. With an internet connection and a little bit of imagination, he could find enough blogs and news sites to inspire a thousand stories.
He wished his friends could all imagine themselves as characters in a savage plot, tortured by unfulfilled love, and be grateful that none of it was true. One look into such a deceitful mirror, and surely they would all cherish their good fortune, and know how jealous it makes others.
Early the next day, as he was walking by the sea, his lips trembling with grief, he noticed Diego and Ling laughing and rolling together on the beach, covering each other in kisses and cool morning sand. ¡Te Amo!—Ling shouted as if receiving direct revelation from heaven.
¡Te Amo! ¡Te Amo! ¡Te Amo! ¡Te Amo! ¡Te Amo! ¡Te Amo Diego!
Filled with envy, he turned his thoughts to the recipient of his wife’s love letter. He contemplated killing the man, and for a brief moment even pictured himself being interrogated by the police, arguing that he had only done it in defense of the socialist motherland. But then he caught sight of the man’s children.
Surely it was a sign—the young daughter chasing her giggling little brother, running through puddles in the street. He looked at them for a while, and couldn’t bear the thought of making them fatherless. At that moment, their lives seemed so much more interesting than his. He looked down at the puddles and noticed that it was a beautiful day—the sky, blue with some clouds obscuring its plainness. The reflection did something to frame and reveal the veiled splendor of life.
They belong in the story...along with Diego and Ling and all the others. What else is there to do out at sea, but tell stories? I don’t know what their names are. I’ll name them Cara—and Alejandro. They remind me of my children. They look so innocent. How beautiful the world must appear to them. There’s too much defilement within me to see as well as they do. I know there’s truth out there somewhere, but I can’t see beyond the veil. Perhaps I’m hopeless. Perhaps only God can save me from myself. Someone should tell them. Someone really should. That if one day, their hearts should break, to consider it all joy, for joy is always filled with sadness—a small price to pay. Little children, take the good with the bad. Steal joy if you have to. Purchase every sorrow.
...
In the dream, she stared at a moonlit flower for a long time. The column, petal and lips seemed to form a face. As if to shame her, it became the exact representation of her husband, the one she always took for granted. In that moment of clarity, she remembered that he was her rock, the answer to every prayer that she had starred the heavens with.
She vowed to return to the only thing that mattered, a perfect life and a perfect love. She looked closer at the flower, shining in its constellation of tendrils, and noticed that it was filled with words. The flower wasn’t a flower at all, but a crumpled up letter, stained with a lover’s tears.
She awoke, determined to destroy her love letter before her husband could find it. She didn’t know what possessed her to write such words, in a letter she never intended to send; to a man she didn’t love.
She had seen Luciano one day in the park. He was magnificent. Tall, but not too tall. Handsome, slender and charming. The sight of him in a baseball uniform almost made her want to undress, or at least reveal something of her labyrinth heart that she was unable to show her husband. But in Luciano’s gaze, she found nothing but oceans of emptiness, and never once touched him. She knew that half the women on the island coveted him. He was merely an ideal, a fantasy, not her joy, her strength and satisfaction.
The last time she had seen her husband, it almost seemed that he was asking with his eyes for an eternal embrace. Sometimes you can tell by a person’s expression that it will be the last time you ever see them. She entertained the thought for a moment and then scoffed at it. But a day later, she feared the worst, because few things in life matter as much as the things people never get to say to one another.
She searched for her husband, to claim once again her perfect life and perfect love, but he had already left on a balsa, hoping only that she would enjoy his absence, and perhaps one day, be as happy as Ling.
And so her husband drifted out to sea with a group of men who had spent so much time together that they had begun to resemble each other, identical in their length of facial stubble and silver rimmed spectacles, equal in their beatings and imprisonment.
He could identify with their plight—to document the disappearance of others, to denounce nationalism and crimes against humanity. But he had chosen love, wishing to carve out some measure of happiness with his wife and children. And yet, in the end, he discovered that life is cruel to both the brave and the ordinary.
Once they were far out in the choppy waters, and could no longer see land, he told them a parable. He said that the kingdom of hell was like an enormous canyon that had been dug out of the earth and that with all the dirt taken from the excavation, a mountain in the sea was created, a place that one could climb only by day, and never after sunset, to enter paradise.
The men told him that they didn’t understand the parable, and so he explained to them that in the darkest of nights, there is much to be unearthed; much to help form a way to heaven, a place where not only could one fall in love, but also stay in love.
The men told him that they still couldn’t grasp his strange elucidations, and so he told a long story of
human sorrow, inspired by the war in Afghanistan and the spiritual war that tears at every heart. And when he was finished telling his story, they all died at the feet of God, in the whirlwind and the storm.
...
His wife found a new letter, folded in the shape of a flower and placed over her letter to Luciano. It read:
My love, my sky, my reason to breathe and die. If only I could have you. If only you could have loved me. I know it’s too much to ask, to possess the entire night. That’s what you are to me, the stars that fill up the void. Your bright eyes are breathtaking, magical like the tides rushing in under the moonlight. I sometimes believed that you loved me as much as I loved you. Such vanity - how could I ever think that I could have you to myself - that the stars belong to only one lover? But how I treasured your lies. I remember the times when I kissed you over and over, each kiss like a luminous horizon, a prayer, a fasting, with each warm kiss, my night ending. But now my night grows greater. The moon has stopped moving against the rim of the sky, eclipsed by the shadow of your licentious secrets. I want to run to you, but can only run away, knowing that you are not mine. I can never forget your kisses, a hymn, an ecstasy, your warm kisses, like a faint laughter that cures all despair. And because I can never forget, I will believe all your lies.
...
The balseros passed from flame to flame, the wood, stubble and hay burning away, along with every facet of their souls that had not been born of love. As they approached the shores of ethereal light, the storyteller was unable to chronicle the happenings that surpassed sight, sound, human language and imagination. His scientific mind shuddered at the word heaven, which to him, seemed like such an antiquated concept. He preferred the term higher dimension.
His emotions were searched and sifted, torn apart, happiness from fear, envy from passion, arrogance from self-loathing. He felt himself being refined by the flames; perhaps there would be something left that was formed of silver and gold, something within him—made of love—that would endure the caldron.
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