Life During Wartime

by Lucius Shepard

  “Maybe Gilbey begged for it.”

  “Then I’d remember him.”

  “How ’bout your baby, you remember your baby, don’tcha?”

  Ruy spat at Mingolla’s feet. “My baby’s born dead, man. I get rid of it ’cause my woman she can’t stand to be ’round it.”

  “If you say so.”

  “That’s what I say. Those bullshit savages back in Livingston, what they know ’bout Ruy Barros. What they know ’bout my work for the cause. I work my butt off for the cause, I do things nobody else got the belly for.”

  “That right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Ruy went chest-to-chest with Mingolla. “But what’s a fuckin’ gringo like you know ’bout shit. You…”

  Mingolla gave Ruy a push. “How you know I’m American?”

  Ruy grinned. “Debora, she tell me.”

  “That’s crap,” said Mingolla. “How’d you know?”

  “Huh! Ruy Barros, he can smell a fuckin’ gringo. That’s a nice paint job, man, and you got the language down…but you walk gringo, you act gringo, and the things you say is gringo. And you don’t see that the cause is for all the people. For priests, murderers, whatever.” He shook his fist at the sun. “La Violencia! Lemme tell ya, man. This war ain’t gonna end ’till we win it.”

  Despite himself, Mingolla was impressed by Ruy’s vehemence, by the honest zeal it appeared to embody.

  “You don’t unnerstan’ nothin’, gringo,” Ruy continued. “And that’s why me and the little lady gonna work things out. ’Cause in her heart she know I unnerstan’ her.”

  The time had come, Mingolla decided, to stake out his claim. “You talk a lot, man, I like that. Guys who talk a lot, that’s all they’re up for.”

  Ruy rubbed his chin, his long face grew thoughtful. “You sayin’ you can take me, man?”

  “Absolutely.” Mingolla gestured at Debora. “And y’know what? She can take ya, too. You ain’t a threat at all, beaner. So set it out, give it a shot.”

  Ruy’s shoulders tensed as if he were preparing to throw a punch, but he must have thought better of it. He hitched up his pants, scowled at Mingolla, and went into the wheelhouse. Mingolla picked up the cassette player, held it up to show Ruy, who looked away, attending to the business of steering. Then he walked back to the stern, turning up the volume of a ballad.

  “Come and live with me…

  Aw, girl, there ain’t no better place for you,

  ’cause you just hangin’ on

  to somethin’ old when your mind is onto somethin’ new.

  Listen to that jukebox pla-ay-ay,

  one of them sad ol’ Sentimental Journey tunes,

  somebody’s singin’ ’bout. Hey, girl,

  I guess it wasn’t meant to be for me and you…

  But though you say we’re through,

  I guess it all depends upon your point of view,

  ’cause when I look into your eyes,

  I can see clear through ya and don’t ya know…

  You Can’t Hide Your Love From Me

  You Can’t Hide Your Love From Me

  Well, y’can run but…

  You Can’t Hide Your Love From Me

  Y’ain’t no mystery, lady…”

  “What’s that?” said Debora, frowning at the player as Mingolla sat beside her.

  “Prowler…like it?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “It’s old,” he said. “From four or five years ago. And not typical. They do mostly uptempo stuff. I’ll find something else.”

  “No, I’m starting to like it.” She leaned into him.

  “…that stranger over there,

  sittin’ all alone, so sad and blue,

  he’s playin’ solitaire and losin’ bad,

  drinkin’ gin and feelin’ sad ’bout missin’ you.

  But don’tcha see, somewhere in his heart

  he knows there’s still a trace

  of lovelight in your eyes tonight

  and foolish dreams you can’t deny

  each time you look his way…”

  “What were you and Ruy talking about?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You sounded angry.”

  “He’s an asshole.”

  “…he don’t believe in fate,

  and to win at solitaire

  you just lay the red queen down

  upon the diamond ace,

  y’can’t lose that way and…

  “You Can’t Hide Your Love From Me…”

  Debora’s hair drifted into his face, and it seemed he was breathing her in with the same rhythm as that of the swells lifting the Ensorcelita. Seaweed floated on the swells, clumped reddish brown beard-lengths with black bean-shaped seeds. The sun beat down, wedging silvery between the clouds, and a dark bird wheeled above the shore, then dived and vanished into the palms.

  “I guess he is,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Ruy…an asshole. But I still think he means well.”

  “Meaning well doesn’t matter when you’re that much of an asshole.”

  “Come on, girl!

  Can’t ya find it in your heart

  to take a chance,

  and see if there’s a world where we

  could live and never have to take

  a backward glance?

  Maybe I’m a dreamer, maybe I’m a fo-oo-ool,

  or maybe I’m just a lonely man,

  but maybe I’ve got the answers to

  all those questions that are troublin’ you…

  All ya gotta do is ask…”

  Ruy poked his head out of the wheelhouse, glaring at them, his lean cruel face a badge of enmity, a reminder of all they had endured, all they were going toward. But Mingolla felt so content, so removed from the world of trials and disasters, that—not stopping to think how Ruy might take it—he grinned and gave him a cheerful wave.

  The next day they were stopped by a patrol boat, but it was no big deal. Ruy paid a bribe, and they went on their way, sailing along the Honduran littoral. However, they spent the day after that moored in a deep cove, and Ruy informed them that they would be traveling at night for a while; he claimed he was “illegal” in this part of Honduras and didn’t want to risk being spotted by the militia. He continued to pursue Debora, and although his pursuit was somewhat more circumspect, Mingolla believed it had become more intense, more driven. From watching him, from further information that Debora had passed to Tully, he realized that as a byproduct of his confrontation of Ruy, Ruy’s feelings had acquired validity, and he thought this involved a conscious decision on Ruy’s part, that he had elevated simple lust to an obsessive level, as if the idea of the unattainable had inspired a passion.

  To avoid Ruy, he and Debora kept to their cabin, and as a result they engaged more and more in their fierce mental communion. There was tangible proof that their powers were still increasing, but even had there been no proof Mingolla would have known it. Standing in the bow one night, at the extreme end of a road of rippling gold light that stretched across the black water to the newly risen moon, he felt as he had on the riverbank their last evening in Fire Zone Emerald, that he could look past the horizon and grasp the essence of the days to come; this time the feeling was freighted with clarity, and he believed that were he to exert the slightest effort, he might launch himself into another vision. But he was afraid of visions, of visionary knowledge. He wanted to inhabit this long oceangoing moment and never arrive anywhere, and so he restrained himself from testing his strength.

  A further consequence of their retreat was that they gained new insights into each other. Though the things Mingolla had already learned about Debora implied the existence of a complex personality, he saw now that her growth had been interrupted by the war, her complexity channeled into the simple pragmatism of the revolutionary; her incarnation of the revolutionary spirit was childlike, capable of aligning everything she perceived into rudimentary categories, black and whit
e, pro and con, and whether she continued to grow would depend on how much longer her natural processes were constrained. He sensed a similar inhibition in himself, but pictured his process as being less constrained than trained into specific patterns of growth, the way Japanese gardeners bind the limbs of trees to make them spread crookedly and sideways.

  The smell of gasoline was always thick in the cabin, and they could feel the vibration of waves against the hull. There were two bunks, no lights, and the close quarters and darkness acted to enforce intimacy. One night as they lay together, Debora’s buttocks cupped spoon-style by Mingolla’s hips, he started to turn her onto her stomach, to enter her from behind, and inside his head he heard a shrill, No! Heard it clearly, enunciated in Debora’s voice. The message was so sharp and peremptory, it stimulated him to answer in kind, What is it? What’s wrong?

  “I heard you,” she said, shifting to face him.

  “I heard you, too. Let’s try it again.”

  After several minutes they gave it up.

  “Maybe it didn’t happen,” she said.

  “It happened, and it’ll happen again. We just can’t push it.”

  The grinding of the engine, the mash of waves shouldering the hull. Debora settled against him, and he put an arm around her. “What was wrong?” he asked. “What’d I do?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “If you don’t wanna tell me…”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just that things are so good for us, I don’t want to spoil it by bringing up the past.”

  The pitch of the engines dropped to an articulated grumble, and Ruy shouted.

  “Maybe I should tell you,” she said. “Maybe it’ll explain why I was so reticent with you at first.”

  “Back in Emerald?”

  “Yes…you see there were a lot of reasons I didn’t want to get involved with you like this, and one was I was afraid it wouldn’t be any good between us.”

  “You mean sex?”

  She nodded. “It hadn’t ever been good for me, and I thought nothing could change that, not even being in love. But it is good, and I keep getting scared it won’t last.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s so perfect…the way you fit me, how you touch me. And everything before was so imperfect.” She turned away as if embarrassed. “When they brought us in for interrogation…the government…”

  “Your family?”

  “Yes.” She let out a sigh. “When they brought us in, I knew they’d rape me. That’s what they always do. I prepared for it, and every day that passed, every day it didn’t happen, I grew more afraid. I thought they must be saving me for something special, some special horror. Finally this man came to see me. Major Armangual. He was very young to be a major, and not too bad-looking. He spoke politely, softly. He made me feel hope. He explained that he’d interceded on my behalf with the government, and that he’d take me out of prison that same day if I’d cooperate with him. I was sure that cooperation included sex, but I didn’t care. The prison was awful. Other women screaming all the time, bodies being carried past my cell. And I thought if I was out, I might be able to help my family. So I told him, Yes, I’d do anything. He smiled at that and said I wouldn’t have to do much at all, that his requirements were limited and specific. Just some office work.”

  Debora gave a tired-sounding laugh, plumped up the pillow beneath her head. “It was the weekend, and he was off duty, so we went back to his house. A fancy house in Zone One, near the big hotels. There was a pool, maids. He installed me in a room on the second floor, and I expected him to come to me that night. But no such thing. I ate dinner with him, and afterward he said he had papers to go over and suggested I get some sleep. The whole weekend was like that. It was as if I were a houseguest. I considered trying to escape, but the grounds were patrolled by dogs, and I still hoped I could do something for my family…even though I didn’t have much hope left.” Her voice faltered, steadied. “Monday morning I rode to work with him. He was in the air force, and he had an office at the airport. Do you know Guatemala City?”

  “Not well.”

  “There’s a small military airport across from the civilian one, and that’s where the office was. All morning I sat in the reception room with his aide, staring at the walls. Around noon the aide brought me a sandwich and a soda. I ate, waited some more. I was beginning to think the major just wanted me to sit there and look nice. Then about two o’clock he came to his door and said, ‘Debora, I need you now.’ Just the way he’d ask a secretary in to take dictation, just that offhanded tone. I went into the office, and he told me to take off my underwear. Still very polite. Smiling. I was afraid, but like I said, I’d prepared for this, and so I did what he asked. He told me to get down on my hands and knees beside the desk. I did that, too. I shed a few tears, I remember, but I managed to stop them. He pulled out a tube from his drawer, some kind of jelly, and…and he lubricated me. That was almost the worst part. And then he dropped his trousers and came inside me from behind, the way you…”

  “I’m sorry,” said Mingolla. “I didn’t…”

  “No, no!” Debora’s hands fluttered in the dark, found his face, cupped it. “Sometimes I want you to do that, but…” She sighed again. “Let me tell the whole story.”

  “All right.”

  “I thought he’d make love to me roughly. I’m not sure why. Maybe I figured that his good treatment had been to lull me, to undermine my preparation. But he didn’t. For a long time he didn’t even move. Just kneeled behind me, inside me, his hands on my hips. There was a bottle of whiskey on his desk, and after a couple of minutes he had a drink from it. Then he moved a little, but only a few times. He had another drink, moved some more. It went on like that for about a half-hour. Then somebody knocked on the door. The major yelled for them to come in. It was another officer. He looked at me, but didn’t seem surprised by what was going on. After that first look, he didn’t pay any attention to me, just discussed business with the major, something about scheduling, and then he left. It kept on like this for the rest of the afternoon. The major having a few drinks, moving now and again, conducting business. At the end of the day he pulled out of me and masturbated. He didn’t insist I watch, he didn’t seem to care what I was doing. He finished, wiped it up with a rag. Then he drove me back to his house, and that night over dinner he treated me as if I were his houseguest again.”

  Mingolla rested his head on her shoulder, bitter, wishing he could take the memory from her.

  “It was the same every workday,” she said. “In the beginning I felt relieved that he wasn’t hurting me, but before long…I don’t know how to explain what I was feeling. Humiliation was there, the fact that I was being used like a piece of furniture. Guilt that it wasn’t worse. The feeling of being a nonperson. Sometimes I’d hate myself for not hating it worse than I did, and sometimes I’d almost enjoy it. I’d have a sense of being freed by it, that once he was inside me I’d go floating off into some other universe, invisible, made different, unique. Then I’d worry that he’d get tired of me and put me back in prison. I remember once when I was worrying about that, I started to make love to him, to take an active part…you know, to give him a better time. But he didn’t want that. He reprimanded me, told me to hold still or he’d punish me. My feelings for him changed, too. Back and forth. One day I’d be repelled by him, I’d dream about killing him. And the next day I’d be thankful that he was sparing me from worse. I’d actually look forward to the office, to the chance to prove myself to him. I’d make bright conversation at dinner, bring him presents. For a while I was actually in love with him, at least I felt something like love. And I think that’s why he finally released me, I think my attachment to him didn’t suit his needs. I was terribly distracted, close to a breakdown, and I’d begun to tell him how I felt. Trying to widen our range of communication. I guess I thought he’d be interested. Like a scientist, you know, I thought he might want to take notes on the disintegration of my pe
rsonality. But he wasn’t interested. God knows what did interest him.”

  She was silent a long time, and Mingolla asked what had happened.

  “One morning I was waiting for him, and two soldiers came instead. They drove me out of town, north toward Antigua. I knew they were going to kill me, throw my body in a barranca. But they just dropped me off by the side of the road. I felt lost, I didn’t know what to do. I walked back and forth, laughing and crying. I didn’t realize they’d left me off at a bus stop until the bus pulled up. I got on the bus…it seemed the only choice. I never saw the major again. Two years later, after I’d gone through the therapy, I tried to find him. But I learned he was dead. Assassinated.”

  “Did you want to kill him?”

  “There was more to it than that. I think I wanted to understand what he’d been trying to do with me…if it wasn’t just a matter of his own perversity. I’m not sure what I would have done to him. Probably killed him…I don’t know.”

  The engines had slowed, and Mingolla could hear the bubbling of the Ensorcelita’s wash; he was grateful for the sound, because its sudden incidence alleviated the need for speech. Minutes went by with no communication between them other than touches. Debora’s breathing grew deep and regular. Then she said, “Make love to me.”

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I was…but I was dreaming we were making love.”

  “Aren’t you too sleepy?”

  “Maybe, but we can try.”

  He pulled her close, kissed her. Her response was tentative at first, and he wondered if she was testing herself against the bad memory. Soon, though, she lost herself in the foreplay. But when he entered her, she lay motionless beneath him and he started to withdraw.

  “I want you to finish,” she said.

  “You’re too sleepy.”

  “No, it’s good. Sometimes when I don’t move I can feel you more. I like that.”

  He felt irrationally aloft, distant from her, and this gave him an inarticulate concern; but then concern vanished as he heard her voice call to him in the quiet of his mind.

  Once she had fallen asleep he lay back, listening to the engines. Something was bothering him, and he realized that he still felt distant from her. He knew if he were to turn and embrace her, the distance would vanish, and he would feel drifty, at peace. But knowing that changed nothing. He had the idea that his insights into her were somehow in error. As were her insights into him. It seemed to him that they had become shifty characters to each other, that their mode of honesty—these sudden bouts of revelation and confession—were smokescreens. Not that they were lies, but rather that by being framed so dramatically they became less than truths, a means of obscuring some truth that perhaps they themselves didn’t understand. That must be it, he decided. That they didn’t understand themselves well enough to practice honesty…or else they were frightened of self-discovery. Self-discovery was an unpleasant chore. He could look back a mere matter of weeks and see what an idiot he had been. Like in Emerald. His role of hard-ass creep, his lovesickness. Roles poorly conceived and poorly acted. And God only knew what sort of idiot he was being now. He turned onto his side, facing away from her. Their problems likely had something to do with how they had begun; though for the most part he had been able to put that behind him, it was always there beneath the surface, always a cause for doubt. He sighed, and the sigh coincided with an enormous swell lifting the Ensorcelita, and for an instant he felt that the coincidence of tide and breath would carry them in a gravitiless arc beyond Panama to a dark country where silent cowled figures with burning eyes awaited their arrival. He turned onto his back again, causing Debora to stir and mumble. He tried to resurrect his train of thought, but it no longer seemed important. None of it mattered, none of it had real weight. He lay awake a long time, unable to think of anything that did.