Hypothermia

by Enrigue, Alvaro

  THERAPY: GRINGOS

  Australians were the dregs of British society; their country was a penal colony that became a nation. Besides there being something heroic in that assertion, there’s also a real identification between the land and its occupiers: Australians are from Australia. We gringos can’t even boast that much: we’re the scum of the earth, the leftovers from all the other countries that came looking for a second chance.

  It’s nothing to laugh about. You were born here and they convinced you in school that it’s the best country in the world, but sure enough, your father or your grandfather didn’t think that way, did they, because they came from somewhere else.

  Isn’t that right?

  This country is nameless, and we as its inhabitants have chosen, consciously and consistently, to have no patronymic: Salvadorans are Salvadoran, Chinese are Chinese, and the French are French. Gringos? We’re African Americans, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, German Americans, Irish Americans. A woman at the Bank defines herself as a Bohemian American, and nobody remembers anymore, not even in the Czech Republic, that Bohemia was once a nation under Austro-Hungarian protection. We’re neither an empire, nor a republic, nor a monarchy. We’re nothing: it’s every man for himself because no one wants to belong to the world of second chances. We’re whatever slipped through the cracks of history: pure ambition without any ulterior commitments—a ragtag band of pirates. We’re gringos and we urgently need some national therapy.

  Don’t laugh. Think of it as a business opportunity and you’ll see that I’m right.

  SAINT BARTHOLOMEW

  Sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory.

  I CORINTHIANS 15:43

  He told her that he’d gone to church one day and that the Polish baritone had just disappeared, his wife and all their children too: now they hadn’t been to Mass in three weeks.

  He said it apropos of nothing, simply to fill up a moment of silence, perfectly aware of the fact that this was the first she was hearing about the singer. It was an incidental sort of anecdote, and he probably thought to bring it up just for a laugh, but it pulsed with something sadder and less explicable: talking on cell phones made him tense because—he thought—it conjures up a frustrating and illusory sense of nearness; information is accelerated but nothing is communicated, at least not in the strict sense of the word. No matter how much you want it to, an empty, disembodied voice does not represent an act of communion. He felt that their calls were like some exam that he had to pass, or simply survive.

  Sometimes they talked for a specific reason—to agree on a cover story, to avoid some careless slip—but most of the time they called each other just to call. It was a ritual, an act of acquired, gratuitous risk, something that had begun one day and quickly acquired a life of its own: at one time it would simply have felt right now and then to call, but now it was a ritual, something they’d come to expect. Sometimes it was a good call, sometimes not, but it formed a strand in a vast web of expectations and anxieties to which they were now well accustomed. Perhaps those ten minutes plundered from the wasteland of the day helped them—like going to church—to show each other that they weren’t gringos, not yet, not completely.

  They’d been chatting about how the big, full congregations seen at the Spanish Masses were so moving: the preposterously criminal in the same throng as the faithful, he said. Then he explained how, in spite of that, he preferred the cosmopolitan coldness of the nine o’clock Mass—in English: with Filipinos, Lebanese, Irish, Koreans, Italians—because, for one, it was progressive and distinguished; then, for another, it provided him with the opportunity to witness the weekly skirmish in the Polish baritone’s ongoing battle.

  Either the singer and his wife were the last gringos attentive to the Vatican’s stance on reproduction or they had learned from the Irish that all triumphs are, in the end, statistical; the Protestants would have to be beaten through sheer numbers. At the Hispanic Mass, their seven unwashed children wouldn’t have seemed such a terrible disaster, but compared to a typical English-speaking family—a few adults and a single child—they were absolutely scandalous. Seven? she asked him, thinking he must be exaggerating. Seven, he answered, five boys and two girls.

  Before the watchful eyes of the parish, the clan had grown to an uncontrollable size, and the children’s disarray had naturally increased in direct proportion to their quantity: the younger ones’ clothing had already been worn threadbare by their older siblings, who were also better fed. The mother, a beanpole of suspiciously Calvinistic propriety and severity when times were good, had gone flabby, swollen, and purple beneath some dresses that were, by now, quite snug. The baritone was still red-faced and robust but his beard was badly trimmed and his tennis shoes were a disgrace; the alterations stitched into the underarms of his shirts gave notice of a sudden, unhealthy increase in weight. They would have been a normal enough family in the 1970s, a time when modesty was not yet considered a defect, but among the perfectly trimmed and outfitted congregation at nine o’clock Mass they seemed more like a band of castaways.

  There was a time—by now a part of the parish mythology—when the baritone attended Mass from his place on the musicians’ risers, to the right of the altar, his back to the organist, lavishly pouring out his implacable voice alongside a Ugandan woman draped in curtain-like dresses. His proliferating offspring, however, obliged him to move down to mingle with the multitude: his wife found it impossible to maintain order among the children herself. There were three or four unbearable Masses before the singer decided to leave stardom behind, urged forward—it was murmured—by the priest, who could no longer continue casting the pearls of his religious office before a herd of swine being distracted by a bunch of little brats fighting over some completely wornout toy.

  The opening section of the first Mass that the baritone spent back on terra firma felt something like a surrender: likely prompted by resentment, he didn’t allow himself to be tempted by the music, and the truth is that he was missed: his singing talent was far too good for a church like that. His children still behaved quite badly, only tempered now by a certain shyness; it seemed that the fat man, who did nothing to control them, only barely commanded their respect. The Ugandan woman sang alone up to the Acclamation, when the Pole couldn’t stand it any longer and quietly, humbly joined in singing with the rest of the faceless congregation. To hear his voice again amid the Hosannas was like a soothing balm: in the end, the main reason for attending Mass during eras when faith seems to be on the wane is to demonstrate that, regardless of how prodigal he has been, the son can always return home; that one is permitted to follow a little in the footsteps of his parents and grandparents.

  So, are you taking the girls? she interrupted him. He’d been so focused on sustaining the flow of his narrative that he didn’t see her curveball coming. Where? To church. Of course, he said, it’s good for them, a civilizing influence: the Mass is the story that explains all the other stories, even if I don’t believe in it. I do. I’m jealous. And does she go? Who? Your wife. He hesitated a bit before answering. Sometimes. Isn’t she Lutheran? Yes, and that’s why.

  The duet remained stable for a few more Masses: the Ugandan woman on the riser—a goddess in drapery—and the Pole in the pews below, an exiled Romeo. But nothing lasts forever, he said; bound by duty, the Ugandan woman heeded her community’s call, becoming the regular soloist in the choir at the twelve o’clock Mass with its congregation composed of recently arrived African immigrants.

  Then the war began. Probably angry because the priest, until he found a different singer, preferred to conduct the ceremony solely with organ music, the baritone began to use his whole voice—trained in who knows what conservatory to fill theaters of Soviet dimensions—with the goal of blowing away the other worshipers who, sparse and timid, tried to follow the organist in their blue psalm books. On the two Sundays that it took the priest to place a substitute on the riser, the Pole launched the same string of provocations. He opened by in
toning the antiphon at a barbarous volume that he only increased following the Gloria. By the offertory he had become the lord of all the air in the church, such that he raised or lowered his tone just enough to throw the priest off course—even with a microphone clipped to his cassock, the priest had a very hard time competing with him.

  When the moment arrived to exchange the sign of peace, the priest and the congregation had already surrendered, so that the last man standing was the organist, who was also the toughest nut to crack. The baritone’s strategy, nevertheless, was infallible. He faithfully followed the keyboard’s tempo up to the point when he felt that he could flatten it, then unleashed the full power of his voice box, and once he had the melody in his pocket, he slowed or accelerated the time at will. The organist’s bald head glowed red with fury when he discovered—thanks to a slight delay on the parts of the other faithful worshippers—that he had lost control of the music. So that the ceremony wouldn’t lose its solemnity, he had no other remedy but to follow the enemy.

  This was the fat man’s moment of glory. Although he and his brood always occupied the front pew on the right-hand side of the nave, they waited until the paterfamilias had won his duel to the death with the organist to stand up and receive Communion. Their approach to the chalice practically stopped the show. The baritone walked slowly behind his wife, bearing the whole rite in his throat, luminous from the effort, and surrounded by his entire retinue of seven children. When his turn came, he cut off his singing, regardless of their place in the psalm, and bowed his head with a sincerely peaceful gesture that he maintained until finishing his prayers. That, in some way, revealed the irreproachably Catholic quality of his mettle: his body, liberated in full triumph over the banality of its earthly battles, was a perfect lesson on the redemptive power of a god supposedly incarnate in human flesh.

  When he finished praying, he rose to his feet like a triumphant bullfighter and, before sitting down, gave the congregation a happy look—he supposed they were on his side. The organist received a malevolent smile; although he had already recovered his preeminent position, for the time being, he knew that he’d lost his weekly opportunity to show off his middling flights of virtuosity.

  The war of the Polish baritone, he said to her, as if reforming his own front line in preparation for the final assault of the enemy that was the same senseless story he was telling, is the ritual within the ritual found within the walls of Christ the King church. With a certain relief, he heard what sounded like a nasal tone of approval, although it might have just been interference: he usually phoned her from the Starbucks on H Street, two or three blocks from the Bank, to avoid the discomfort of watching her husband walk past while he was trying so hard to make her laugh.

  The priest tried various recourses, each time with worse results. He hired a tall old Puritan woman, clean and ugly, hoping that her persistent, piercing high notes would drill through the baritone’s bulk. She was steamrolled during the Kyrie. This woman returned the following Sunday, better armed: the sacristan had set up a microphone for her on the podium, one even better than the priest’s own. When the poor woman began singing the penitential rite, the Pole raised his eyebrows then pulverized her without removing his hands from his pants pockets. The organist’s bald head turned purple as an archbishop’s mantle. After the Puritan woman’s failure there was a very young Jamaican man whose angelic flight through the world was inevitably brought to ground by a flailing plunge from the ethereal heights of the Responsorial Psalm. Then came, in succession, a rosy giant of a man, pink as a pig; the rabid Dominican woman who directed the choir for the Mass in Spanish; and three unflappable Filipino señoras, fearless because they knew no one had any idea what they were singing. Three risers had to be stacked up for them to reach the microphone. It was no use. The Pole continued tyrannizing the Mass with his lungs of steel. Surrounded by his swarming progeny during the slow, majestic procession toward the altar and host, he was the full, vigorous embodiment of Slavic tenacity, destroying tempos and pushing notes to the breaking point.

  Then he disappeared. It wasn’t until he said this to her that he really and with clarity saw that he was telling a story with no ending. How? she asked, sounding very intrigued. For a moment this gave him the hope that something real was flowing along those microwaves, same as when they were guided only by the inscrutable, magnetic wisdom of the flesh, with nothing else in between them.

  He disappeared, he said, that’s all, nothing else. And? Well, we ended up stuck with the Filipino ladies—they’re frightful. It can’t be. The truth, he answered, is that I really miss him, so much that I went looking for him at Our Lady Queen of Poland. It’s pretty close by. I went to all three morning Masses but there was no sign of him. He disappeared. Maybe he went on vacation, she said. Or he defected to Poland, he responded. Her laughter on the other end of the line made him feel that, in spite of everything, he might be able to save himself.

  THERAPY: DUPLICITY

  I have the strange and terrible habit of confessing offenses I haven’t committed.

  One day, for example, in my hour of deepest sincerity, beweeping our own incarnation of mankind’s fall from grace, I told her that she had not been my only extramarital affair, that I’d had two other lovers. The number I decided on is of particular interest, because I’d never really had any.

  But it would be more interesting still to know why I bother doing this. The fact is that, while confessing to these affairs, I was convinced about the veracity of the events in question. But they made no sense: we’re both adults and we’ve been around the block enough times to be freely admitted to the ranks of the “experienced.” My bragging, therefore, was unnecessary. But that’s what I said to her and now I don’t know how to take it back, because my fictional jadedness isn’t consistent with my fears of our being found out.

  It’s something I’ve done ever since I was a kid: I pretend to have a secret life, all to myself. Well, now I’ve got it, all right, and nobody else can get in. I’m like the blind man in the Bible: although his sight was restored, he had to pretend that he couldn’t see anything because Jesus Christ himself ordered it.

  No, I don’t even know if what I’m saying here is the truth.

  FATHER

  It was by no means a noteworthy event, but it came back to him whenever he allowed himself enough perspective to consider the more practical than admirable scale of values according to which he had always operated, and that had lately, for lack of opportunity, fallen into disuse. During a New Year’s Eve celebration he’d gone out to the garden to have a smoke. He was with his wife and little girls at his father-in-law’s house in Raleigh—a minor, tepid, nondescript city composed almost entirely of suburbs. A fine frozen rain was falling, which in the southern United States can begin at the end of November and not let up until March or April, without ever turning to snow. He had not yet removed his cigarette lighter from his jacket pocket when he spotted an opossum on the garden fence, just above eye level. It was very young, soaking wet, watching him with a hard, unsettling stare.

  As was generally the case, the opossum story came back to him during a peaceful interval: she’d accompanied her husband on a business trip to Hong Kong, a trip he had helped to organize, so his days at the office crawled lazily by, without his boss’s demands for action or his boss’s wife’s need for attention. During that time he checked his e-mail constantly because he knew that a message from her might arrive at any moment. He responded with long, intense letters that always made him feel less lonely while he wrote them, but which ended up being counterproductive. Perhaps because of its visual and sonic potency, the Web made him suppose that he had the world in the palm of his hand, and he was always somewhat disappointed to discover it was not so: despite his being able to read the news from Mexico with the intensity of someone who could still be directly affected by it, she was, in reality, in a Saigon cybercafé, and he was stuck inside the white monster of the World Bank—an air-conditioned Moby Dick—and wh
at lay outside was the District of Columbia.

  The story probably wouldn’t have significance for anyone else, even if they knew its secret. There was no way to know, really: he’d told it to his father one day, many months after it had happened to him. He did so in response to a message in which his father had reported that he’d taken his other grandchildren to the zoo in Chapultepec Park, where he’d noted an air of unbearable servitude in the animals’ eyes. As he supposed, the story of the opossum didn’t arouse any reaction: the next message from his father, which arrived almost a week later, was short on animal lore. Perhaps—it had occurred to him while expounding on details completely inappropriate in a letter to the world’s busiest man—he was telling all this to his father as a cry for help: he would have loved to sit down and have a drink with him and ask if he’d ever been in the same situation, but there was an insurmountable protocol separating them, according to whose rules male relatives may not share any information about their emotional lives.