As I held him in my arms, I ached for him, wondering how he was dealing with what he’d experienced. Watching his father slip away, the doctor making the pronouncement, receiving a copy of the death certificate, dealing with his immediate, and quite surely, ambivalent feelings.
Whether they had resolved their estrangement was not for me to know at that moment, although I suspected that they had. For the first time I heard Étienne Saldano refer to Javier Marcos Saldano Jimenez as my father. That was enough to bring tears to my eyes, tears that I did not want Étie to see, tears that I was able to subtly wipe away while his head rested on my shoulder.
I drove us back toward La Habra Resort in Juan Dolio where we were staying. We rode in relative silence. After a few minutes, Étie turned on the radio. Merengue eased softly from the speakers, a lilting contrast to the soberness in the air.
Eventually Étie turned the music off.
“Hungry?” I asked him.
He nodded affirmatively then placed his hand on my knee, his way of assuring me that he was all right.
We ended up on ElMalecón and dined at the little seaside café that had become one of our spots. The night was warm and balmy. There was a breeze. Waves, reflecting the white moonlight, splashed against the dark shore below us. I don’t remember what we ate. Whatever it was, we ate very little, only picked at it, inhaled the scent of salty sea instead.
The light around us was subdued. The candle inside the small amber lantern on our table illuminated in shadows the dark-caramel beauty of Étie’s pensive face, his dimples, the small scar across his left cheek, his midnight eyes sparkling with the candle’s gently darting reflection even as he stared out over the rhythmic waves that danced against the shore below.
I stared at him. He felt my stare. Slowly he turned to me and stared into my eyes. The smile he smiled was small and telling. He was happy just knowing I was there. I could see that. I was glad for that. Being there, with him, was my sweet joy as well.
He then looked back out over the dark and shimmering sea.
“She was great love of his life,” he finally said. “That is what he say to me and I believe him.”
I sat across from Étie and listened quietly as he told the story that his father had left with him. A handsome young fisherman by the name of Javier and his beautiful new bride Isabella were born and reared in the forest highlands of the Cordillera Central mountain range, into family clans. The Saldanos and the Mendozas fought each other over things nature gave so freely. Lush and fertile land within a hand’s reach of the sky was abundant in these mountains. There were panoramic views of the lovely island below and the clear blue-green water that surrounded it. The mountain folk relished the Yaque del Nortewaterfall that tumbled down the mountainside into a pristine lagoon rich with every kind of fish stock, easy for the catching.
Javier and Isabella married secretly, in defiance of their families, and fled down to the city below, Santo Domingo. There they began a full and happy life made happier by the news of a child on the way.
Javier, now working on an assembly line in a downtown shoe factory, could not have loved his young wife more and as Isabella’s belly grew, so did his near impossible passion for her. She was his life.
As months became weeks and weeks became days, he grew nearly beside himself with glee and joyful anxiety, basking in the coming birth, basking in the prospects of his young family’s bright future.
Javier had worked double shifts at the shoe factory for weeks so that when it was near Isabella’s time, he would be at home with her, monitoring her slightest wince, oiling the stretch marks on her belly, massaging her aching feet, cooking for her, making sure she was comfortable, singing to her. He made sure that everything she needed for the hospital was bagged at the door and that Señor Montase, an elderly Haitian migrant cane worker and the only neighbor he knew well who also had a car, was on call.
And so when Isabella’s water broke in the middle of Javier’s Bésame Mucho serenade, Javier fought his nerves and knew exactly what to do. He freshened and dressed her gently but quickly then grabbed her up in his arms, grabbed the bag at the door, all the while crying out, “Señor Montase! Señor Montase!”
The older man, perched in his open-air window three doors down, knew the happy alarm in Javier’s voice. He limped out of his house as best he could then hustled himself into his twelve-year-old Pontiac and revved up the engine. He grumpily cursed in Creole, skidded its balding Firestones over the chalk gravel that covered his yard and pulled up in front of his young neighbor’s cottage just as Javier, his wife and her bag in his arms, reached the unpaved road where the old man’s car coughed and sputtered like a three-pack-a-day smoker.
Señor Montase jumped out of his car, hobbled quickly around to the passenger side and forced the raggedy door open with a mean yank and a curse. Javier placed his wife in with a jeweler’s nervous delicacy then climbed in beside her and pulled the door shut. Señor Montase had already limped back around to the driver’s side. He climbed behind the wheel, shifted the gear and skidded off down the unpaved road toward the short highway ride to Hospital General.
Quickly Javier carried his wife down the hospital corridor crowded with doctors and nurses and nervous fathers-to-be, cajoling themselves and their seriously pregnant wives.
Señor Montase tried his best to keep up with Javier’s mad dash, but even through his huffing and puffing, the old man could see there was something very strange about what was happening to Isabella. Javier and Señor Montase’s eyes connected, and they bravely, fiercely masked their looks of concern. They were in the hospital now and everything would be fine.
But Isabella’s labor pains were frighteningly uncommon. Her pains were coming much quicker, more often, too often, with such severity that they caused Isabella to scream out horrifically, grabbing hold of Javier’s arm, tearing at it, drawing blood as her agony seemed unbearable.
“It will be all right, my darling,” Javier told her over and over, somehow unsure of his own reassurances.
A doctor in the corridor was the first to notice the blood dripping down between Isabella’s legs.
“Nurse! Nurse!” the doctor yelled out to someone unseen as he rushed to Javier and Isabella. “Get a gurney! ¡Apuro!”
Javier could see it in the doctor’s eyes.
“We need to get her in right away,” the doctor said to him as a nurse appeared with a gurney and, with the aid of a hospital attendant, rescued Isabella from Javier’s bloodied arms, placed her on the gurney and raced her down the hall.
Javier could feel his heart racing. He chased after the doctor, the nurse and the attendant who had cleared the way as they sped Isabella into an emergency room.
“Doctor! Doctor!” Javier pleaded, close on their heels. “What is wrong? What is happening to her?”
“There are complications that we must attend to right away,” the doctor answered in a rush while signaling another attendant to hold Javier back.
“I need to be with her!”
“I am sorry, señor, but she is in very grave condition,” the doctor answered, leading the gurney behind swinging doors, eyeing the attendant to keep Javier back.
Javier’s fight to get in there and be with his wife was a futile one. The attendant, a much bigger man, had obvious security credentials and determination.
Javier looked on frantically, helplessly, and nearly knocked Señor Montase to the ground when the older man, huffing and wheezing, had finally caught up to him and grabbed hold of his shoulder.
“Javier?”
“They will not let me in! Something is not right with Isabella!”
“Try to calm down, my son,” Señor Montase pleaded in a winded whisper. “You must let the doctors take care of this.”
But Javier could not hear what the old man was saying and tried once again to rush into the emergency room and was, once again, stopped by the attendant.
“Señor, you will have to clear this area,” the attendant said firmly
, “or I will alert the hospital police.”
“Come along, Javier,” Señor Montase pleaded again, taking Javier’s arm. “Please…come.”
Javier allowed himself to be led away by Señor Montase, but in the waiting room the old man’s efforts to calm the young father, who smoked cigarette after cigarette, were futile and unintentionally foreboding. Indeed there was nothing that could ease the dread that hovered over the long, excruciating wait.
Finally the doctor appeared. Señor Montase was the first to see him. The old man’s eyes alerted Javier, who turned quickly. Upon seeing the doctor, he dowsed his cigarette with the toe of his shoe and rushed toward him.
“My wife?” he begged breathlessly, eyes widened anxiously.
“Señor, there were difficulties,” the doctor said grimly. “Your son was born breached, and your wife…”
“Are they all right?” Javier begged again, grabbing the doctor by the arm, shaking him without intention.
“Your son will be just fine,” the doctor answered, understanding.
“And my wife?”
“Señor Saldano,” the doctor began slowly. “You wife had lost a great deal of blood. The breach had severely traumatized her already weakened body…she did not survive. I am so sorry, señor.”
Javier did not hear all of the doctor’s sad condolences nor did he feel Señor Montase’s fatherly embrace or see the sadness on both men’s grief-stricken faces.
His own grief was so intense that tremors racked his body, wailing roared from the deepest pit of what remained of his soul.
Slowly his shivering body dropped to the floor. He suddenly cried out, “No! No! No!”
* * * * *
For the next few days, Javier existed in a fog as thick as the cigarette smoke that engulfed his every waking hour.
He had already started drinking himself to death, but now he craved paths more efficient. A bullet to the head, a knife through the stomach, a plunge into the deep end of the sea were the options he considered.
He informed the hospital to keep his baby boy, still there for routine observations. Javier knew that if he were to end his life the child would be better off left to the care of hospital holy sisters, who would surely find good and righteous parents for him. This decision, and the decision to end his life, Javier shared with no one, not even Señor Montase, who had been checking on Javier every day since the death of Javier’s wife and the birth of his son.
But Señor Montase was not blind to Javier’s monumental despair. It had been a week since leaving the hospital, a week of witnessing Javier’s disintegrating emotional state, witnessing Javier’s will to live spiral downward with the force of a crashing jetliner. And so when Señor Montase knocked on Javier’s door several times on that seventh day and did not get an answer, he panicked. He tried the doorknob but it was locked. He called out Javier’s name only to be answered with silence. Finally he hobbled to the side of the house, went to the window and squinted and strained as he tried to see through a ragged slit in the closed shutters.
His eyes widened at what he saw—Javier’s lifeless body sprawled out on the floor.
“Javier! Javier!” the old man yelled out, yanking furiously at the unyielding window. Still there was no movement or sound from the body splayed in the dankness and squalor of crushed cigarette butts, empty rum bottles, urine-muddied grit and grime, rotting food and stale bread being poached by winged cockroaches, fat and fearless in their feast.
He looked around for something, anything to break into that window. But there was nothing. He slammed his naked elbow against the windowpane and winced and cursed as shards of glass impaled his bony flesh. Ignoring the pain, he cleared away the glass that barred him from the latch then worked that latch with bloodied fingers into an arm-twisting surrender.
Frail limbs forced the broken window up. Sheer will and adrenaline dragged the crippled Haitian’s body up and over the windowsill and landed it, with an agonizing thud, onto the floor where insects dined.
He pulled his aching body up and limped across the room toward his friend, most likely dead but slimly not, though he was discouraged by the dull-edged machete beside Javier’s still body.
But the machete’s blade was clean of blood, as was Javier’s body, as far as the Haitian could tell. Even the reeking stench of Javier’s drunkenness and vomit was a blessed odor and as Señor Montase dragged himself closer, he saw that the stillness was not a stillness at all, but a stupor racked by a drunkard’s snore.
“Javier!” Señor Montase scolded, shaking the drunk with grateful anger. “Javier! Javier!”
“¿Qué? ¿Qué?” Javier finally slurred with a stir.
“What is the matter with you, you drunken sow? Get up! Get up off the floor!” But Javier’s state of mind and inebriation reduced him to a sack of flesh, too bulky for the older man, as hard as he tried, to raise and prop into a sitting slouch.
“And what is this?” Montase demanded, having pinned his reeking charge against the wall, having picked the machete up off the floor. “Were you about to slaughter a rooster for dinner tonight?”
Even through his misery, Javier had to laugh, a slow snotty laugh, his milky eyes searching the old man’s face but seeing only a blur.
“I am the rooster that needs be slaughtered,” he managed to say.
“Bullshit!”
“But I no have courage to do this thing, to end this life that should be gone.”
“You have no sense to even think such madness. You have a boy to raise.”
“I cannot.”
“You can!” Señor Montase demanded, shaking the drunk with a fatherly violence, shaking away the tears suddenly drizzling down a twisted face. “You can and you will!”
It did not matter that Javier sobbed as uncontrollably as he vomited. Señor Montase, with little sympathy, shook him more, slapped him hard across his damp and dirty face, slapped the spit and vomit out of him, slapped him into a little boy cowering, a cowardice that only infuriated the old man more, who cursed himself for not having his walking stick to cane the piteous drunkard with.
“You listen to me, Javier Saldano! You are father to a child, not a pig in a pigsty! So get your stinking ass up off this fucking floor and wipe those bitch tears from that dirty face of yours and clean up this place! You cannot bring that child into this mess.”
“I am not bringing him here, Señor,” Javier whimpered.
“So where you take him, to the fucking royal court of Barcelona?”
“I tell the hospital to keep him. I cannot take care of him if I do not live.”
“So you will take care of him because you will live.”
“No, Señor. I cannot live without my Isabella.”
“I see, you selfish prick. You only think of you. You no think of your child. You no think of Isabella’s wants.”
“I want to be with her!” Javier cried out suddenly.
“So when you see her on that great other side, what you say to her? ‘Hola, mi amor, I kill myself and give our baby away so I can be with you.’ Is that what you say to her? Humph! I am sure that will make her greet you with open arms! I should take my one good leg and kick your pathetic ass down the road to the sea just for thinking such foolishness! Now get yourself and this place cleaned up and go get your baby boy!”
* * * * *
That evening, Señor Montase and Javier, after having explained to the hospital staff that there had been a mistake, in fact a change of heart, brought the little baby boy back to Javier’s cottage.
“I don’t know how to raise a baby, Señor Montase.”
“Nobody does. Love will show you how. Now what is his name?
“Excuse me?”
“His name, stupido! What is your son’s name?”
“I have not thought of that.”
“You really are an idiot, Javier. Did you know that?”
“I somewhat suspect you are correct, Señor.”
“Look at him. Even he laughs at you.”
>
“He is laughing, isn’t he?”
“And he laugh beautifully.”
“Yes,” Javier said softly, looking down at the infant giggling in his arms. Then he looked at Señor Montase. He too was giggling.
“What is your name?” Javier asked him.
“What do you mean what is my name?” Señor Montase asked, not taking his giggling eyes off the beautiful child. “Have you lost your memory along with your sanity? My name is Señor Montase, you imbecile.”
“No, Señor. What is your Christian name?”
“My Christian name is Étienne.”
“Then that is what he will be called. Étienne.”
* * * * *
It was no easy task, this child-rearing, for Javier Saldano, but he did the best he could and learned much from Señor Étienne Montase. It was a good thing Señor Montase was far too overbearing to let Javier care for little Étienne on his own. The old man was at Javier’s cottage every day, washing, feeding and cooing at his infant namesake. He scolded the baby’s father for his bumbling helplessness, cursing him out when he would return from work at the factory empty-handed of milk and diapers and treats for the child. Rolling his eyes as he grumpily demonstrated to the imbecile father the proper way to hold a child, hug a child, kiss a child, lull him into a sound sleep.
In time Javier learned the fine and gentle points of fatherhood, thanks to Señor Montase’s hovering tutelage, and although the child grew more to look much like his mother, Javier fought as best he could the sad memories of Isabella the presence of his son engendered day and night.
This too did not escape Señor Montase’s eyes and heart, but he was firm in his counsel to the young father whom he often had to rescue from the deep melancholy merely holding his son brought forth.
“Little Étienne is you, Javier,” Señor Montase scolded gently and often. “He is Isabella. He is the both of you. That is the great gift he is.”
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