The Awakening

by Allen Johnson

  “Lupita, tell me to mind my own business if I am indiscreet, but I was wondering why you were not married.”

  “You are indiscreet,” Lupita joked, “but I will tell you anyway. Frankly, I have not had the time. After high school, there were six years of medical school and a five-year residency in general surgery, and the next thing I knew, I was . . . how old do you think I am anyway?”

  Antonio was thinking how he hated that question, and then he stopped dead.

  Lupita immediately saw his expression change. “Antonio, what is it?”

  Antonio shook his head. “I do not know. I feel like I have had this conversation before in this exact setting.”

  “Are you remembering?”

  Antonio tried to make sense of it; there was a flash of recognition, and then it drifted into a fog and vanished. “It is gone. There was something, but now it is gone. Damn it.”

  “That is all right, Antonio. It is a good sign. It will come back. You just need more time.”

  “But do I have more time? Am I supposed to be somewhere? Am I supposed to be doing something? Who the hell am I?” Antonio grabbed his throat and swallowed hard, knowing that he had pushed his voice beyond its limit.

  Lupita reached over the table and covered Antonio’s hand. It was the first time that she had touched him outside her medical role, and it made him smile. For one brief moment, he took her hand in his, until Lupita slowly withdrew and, suddenly self-conscious, fidgeted with her hair.

  “You are Antonio,” she said, finding her composure, “and the rest will come later.”

  Antonio looked intently at Lupita. “What happened just now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean just now, between you and me. What happened?”

  Lupita looked away from Antonio a moment, took a breath, and then returned his gaze. “Antonio, I am not sure what I feel for you. I think you know that I like you very much. But I do not know anything about you. I do not know if you are married, if you have children—I know nothing.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “I know.” She took in a breath and then added: “I think we should take it slow. All right?”

  Antonio smiled a crooked, tight-lipped smile. “All right.”

  “I NEED TO MAKE A trip to Córdoba. Would you like to keep me company?”

  Antonio looked up from his reading at Diego, who was grinning and looking dapper in a brown fedora with the brim turned down full circle.

  Antonio snapped his book closed. “I would love to keep you company.”

  The two men climbed into Diego’s work van and rolled down the hill, the vehicle clattering like a wind chime fabricated from pots and pans.

  On the half-hour ride to Córdoba, Diego asked Antonio how he was feeling about his stay in Espejo.

  “I feel great,” he said honestly. “If I could choose a family to be a part of, it would be yours.”

  “I am glad to hear that. You are part of the family. So your wish has already come true.”

  On the outskirts of Córdoba, Diego followed what appeared to be a familiar route, finally stopping at a stark brick building with a line of small windows and a treeless courtyard. The structure, enclosed by a six-foot high wall, had no redeeming architectural interest.

  Diego strode to the front gate and punched in a code on a numerical pad inset into the wall.

  As the two men entered the compound, a shriveled man with a sharp nose and pleading eyes tried to slip past Diego and on through the gate before it latched and locked. He was clasping a pillow under his arm as if it were a toddler. Diego took the man by the shoulders and gently reversed his course.

  “Ah, Carlos, it is good to see you again. How are you doing these days?”

  “I want to go home now.”

  “You are home, Carlos; this is your new home.”

  “But . . . I want to go home,” the man said, giving the word “home” new meaning, more like “heaven” than “a place to reside.”

  Diego directed the boney man up the stairs and into the building. Antonio noticed the sign at the side of the door: San Lucas Retirement Home.

  Once in the building, Diego released the man, who padded down a hallway with his pillow still in arm, muttering, “I want to go home. I am ready to go home now.”

  Diego turned to Antonio. “That poor man has held the same thought for fifteen years: Escape. I knew him when he was a young buck. He was ornery then, never really happy with his stake in life. Now he yearns for the life he never valued. Sad, is it not?”

  Antonio felt a strange pang of grief. “Heartbreaking,” he said, hardly able to utter the word.

  Diego smiled at a young nun sitting behind the reception desk. Her face was polished and radiant.

  “Good morning, Sister Teresa.”

  “Good morning, Diego. I like your hat.”

  “Do you now? It makes me look quite handsome, no?”

  Diego’s response was automatic; it was what he always said when someone complimented his fedora. He considered his lighthearted quip a small tribute to his friend, Juanito, and their first meeting on the road to Granada.

  “Yes, indeed. Very handsome.”

  Diego gave the young nun a wink. The brief exchange was a little game they played each time Diego entered the building.

  The nun chuckled. “You rascal,” she said, shaking her head. “I think you will find him in the cafeteria.”

  “Thank you, Sister Teresa.”

  “You are welcome, Diego.”

  Diego took Antonio by the arm. “It is this way.”

  There was a pungent smell about the place, a mixture of disinfectant, cooking oil, and excrement. As the men walked down the hall, they passed a square room full of elderly women with sprouts of whiskers and bloated ankles and, mixed in among them, a few old men swimming in crumpled, mismatched suits and sweaters, one wearing a brown, buttonless suit jacket over a plaid woolen shirt. A small television, mounted seven feet off the floor in the corner of the room, was blaring the news, which from all appearances interested no one.

  At the end of the hall was the cafeteria, a mishmash of round and square tables and assorted straight-back chairs. At one of the tables was a man in a padded lounging wheel chair, his hips and legs covered by a knitted green blanket. The man was pale and unshaven with white tufts of unkempt eyebrows, vacuous eyes, and a looseness on the left side of his face that gave testimony to a severe stroke.

  The old man faced the wall, having no interest in the world around him. He looked like he had sat in that position immobile, comatose, inanimate for a hundred years. And then he did move; with eyes fixed on the wall, he sliced his hands into the blanket at the sides of his legs as if sealing himself from harm. It was a compulsive ritual that he would mindlessly repeat throughout the visit.

  Diego leaned over the man and kissed him on his forehead. “What do you think? Could you use some sunshine today, old man?” Diego wheeled the man to a window, but when the light fell on his face, he bellowed furiously and threw his arms over his eyes as if trying to block the punches of sunlight that jabbed at his head. Diego quickly returned the man to the grim flatness of the blank wall, and he was calm again.

  “I am sorry, old man,” Diego said. “Maybe some other day, all right?” Diego pulled up a chair and sat beside the man, taking his hand in his. “Do you know me today?”

  The man said nothing.

  “I am Diego. Remember? Diego?”

  The man began to speak, but the words, indecipherable to Antonio, were dark and guttural like a deaf mute trying to form an impossible sentence for the first time and arriving at expelling only gibberish.

  “What did he say?” Antonio asked.

  Diego leaned his ear to within an inch of the old man’s mouth. Again the pale man mumbled something nearly incomprehensible in the back of his throat, Diego repeating after him: “I stand for the holy crusade . . . I stand against the enemies of Christ . . . I stand with Franco, defender of the tr
ue Spain.”

  Diego patted the old man’s hand. “Yes, yes, I know, I know.”

  Diego noticed that the blanket had broken loose from around the man’s waist in his tussle with the sunshine, so he tucked the afghan in again, protecting the man’s legs from unseen malicious attack. “There, there. That is better.”

  Then, as if unsatisfied with Diego’s motherly effort, the old man chopped his hands into the green blanket for good measure.

  “Would you like a drink of water?”

  On the table behind the old man was a glass of water and straw. Diego placed the end of the straw on the man’s lips, who rejected the plastic tube with a vicious spit, most of the saliva spraying across Diego’s face.

  “Bueno, bueno,” Diego said with a bent smile, wiping his face with his shirtsleeve. “It was just an idea; I am not married to it.”

  Again Diego patted the man’s hand. Diego looked for a long moment into the dead eyes of the old man, as if trying to find a remnant of someone he knew and loved from another time.

  Finally, Diego heaved a sigh and broke the solemn séance. “I think we can go now,” Diego said to Antonio. Then, turning to the old man: “I will see you soon. Maybe next time you will enjoy a little sunshine. Think about it.”

  The two men retraced their steps down the hallway. At the square room the television was still blaring, and still no one paid any attention.

  When Diego reached the reception desk, he planted the fedora on his head and gave the brim a tug as a salute to the young nun.

  “Hasta luego, Sister Teresa.”

  “Hasta luego, Diego,” she said, again shaking her head in amusement.

  They left the building. Finally, Antonio could breathe deeply again. He felt that he had emerged from the crypt of the living dead, and he was grateful, nearly gleeful, to gorge his nostrils with warm, untainted air.

  On the road back home to Espejo, Diego was strangely quiet.

  “Who was that man?” Antonio finally asked.

  “One who has suffered greatly.”

  “How did he suffer?”

  “He was a man who sided with Franco and the rebels. One year into the war, he was captured by Republican troops. He was imprisoned in total darkness for two years. His knees were shattered with a sledgehammer. And yet, he was loyal to the end. Rather than divulge the names of Nationalist compatriots, he chewed off his own tongue.”

  Antonio winced in horror. “My God.”

  “I learned that he was being held in the Castle of Montjuich in Barcelona. It was not easy, but I made my way to the prison in 1939. I begged for his release. It was granted; after all, he had broken knees and a mutilated tongue; what havoc could the man wreak on a lost Republican cause?”

  “What did you do with him?”

  “I brought him back to Andalusia in a mule-drawn cart.”

  “What became of him after the war?”

  “He served the Catholic church—mostly as a bookkeeper and librarian.”

  “Was he a priest?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can tell that you love him very much.”

  “That has not always been easy. I rarely agree with him; he can be, well … inflexible. But he has suffered—as we all have suffered—and he deserves release.” Diego paused, as if rehearsing his next sentence. “Yes, I do love him.”

  “What is his name?”

  “Francisco Garcia. He is my brother.”

  A FEW DAYS LATER, DIEGO offered Antonio another excursion, this time a walk in the orchard. Antonio quickly accepted.

  Diego selected an olivewood walking stick from a tall, slender terracotta pot at the door. The two men drove the short distance down the hill to the Garcia orchard and pulled off onto a dirt road, which led to a pump house that fed water and fertilizer to the trees. They got out of the car and walked slowly under a serene canopy of green. Although it was only late September—still two months before harvest—the olives were abundant.

  As they ambled along, Antonio picked up a dirt clod, crushed it, and brushed his hands clean. “You must love it here.”

  “For me, there is no other place. My father was born here and his father before him. This earth is part of my blood; I cannot escape it.”

  “Would you ever want to?” Antonio asked with a smile, knowing the answer.

  “No. There is something inspiring about these old olive trees. They are noble and rugged. Did you know that our trees cannot thrive in rich soil? They grow best in poor rocky ground. They can take the driest summer and, although they may suffer for a time, they always come back. We have trees that are 500 years old; a few are a 1,000 years old. Now that is what I call resolve.”

  “You are like these trees.”

  “You mean I look like I could be 500 years old?” Diego laughed.

  “No. I mean you are tenacious. You flourish in rocky soil.”

  “That is a great compliment, Antonio. I doubt that I deserve it.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Thank you,” Diego said gracefully. “Like these trees, I need regular pruning.” He suddenly stopped at a massive tree and snapped off a withered twig from a low-hanging branch. “Do you know how to prune an olive tree, Antonio?”

  “No. I do not have the slightest idea.”

  “Let us sit down here,” Diego said, patting the trunk of the grand old tree.

  Antonio offered his hand to Diego to ease the effort in squatting, and Diego gladly consented, not because he needed the assistance, but because it would have been rude not to accept. Once seated, Diego stretched out his legs and felt the earth. “Sit here beside me,” he said, smoothing a piece of ground. “Where were we?”

  “You were talking about pruning.”

  “Ah, yes. You see, an olive branch produces fruit only once every two years. In the spring, we prune the branches that gave fruit in the last harvest. I am a little like that: To be fruitful, I need regular pruning.”

  “In what way?”

  “When we prune a tree, we shape it. It becomes more hardy, more even, more centered. A man is shaped by knowledge. If I want to sustain the cold winters and the dry summers and still bear fruit, I must be obsessive about learning.”

  “‘Obsession’ is a pretty strong word, Diego.”

  “I chose it intentionally.” The old man suddenly laughed, which was characteristic of him when he thought of a private joke. “I once read a book about obsession; I must have read it a thousand times.”

  Antonio shared the laugh. Then, after a pause, he asked, “So, Diego, what is your source of knowledge?”

  “One day, I will tell you about my friend, Juanito. He introduced me to the masters of philosophy and literature. That changed everything for me; I began to see the world more clearly—especially the interconnectedness of things.”

  “Ah, now I understand why your library is so extensive.”

  “Those books keep me moving in the right direction, but they are not the only source of knowledge, Antonio. We also learn from our successes and, especially, our failures. Although trial and error can be a rude teacher, it can often be life changing.”

  “So, do you feel that you have been sufficiently pruned over the years?”

  Diego laughed. “Just like the olive trees, at least once a year.”

  Antonio enjoyed the way that Diego was able to poke fun at himself; he was a man who was perfectly at home in his own skin. “You seem like a religious man.”

  Diego shuddered, as if Antonio had invited him to shake hands with a snake. “No, Antonio. You have misjudged me. In fact, I may be the least religious man on earth. But I would like to think that I am a spiritual man.”

  “What is the difference?”

  “I am seventy-four years old, Antonio, and in my lifetime there is one truth that comes back to me again and again.”

  “I am listening.”

  Diego looked skeptically at his young friend. “Are you sure that you want to hear the musings of an old man?”

  An
tonio considered his question. “Diego, I am a clean slate. I know nothing. Literally.” He paused. “I am hungry to learn, and I cannot think of a better teacher than Diego Garcia.”

  The old man tapped Antonio’s leg and grinned. “There are teachers who are more gifted, Antonio, but I am honored to tell you what I know. Here it is then. This is my truth: Dogma divides, principles unite.”

  “Hmm,” Antonio said quietly, mulling over the idea.

  “I do not care a wit about dogma. It does not matter to me if Jesus walked on water or if Muhammad split the moon with his finger or if one must be baptized by sprinkling or immersion or not at all. That is all dogma, as far as I am concerned, and it is the root of division. It separates families and drives nations to war.

  “For example, the Spanish Inquisition—lasting 300 years, Antonio—was driven by dogma. Its goal was to purge the nation of heretics, meaning anyone who was not Catholic. The crusades were also about dogma. The religious wars in France were about dogma. The Muslims forced out of India and the Hindus out of Pakistan—that, too, was about dogma. And the horror continues to this day.”

  “So what is the alternative?”

  Diego picked up a small green branch. “The alternative is like this twig. If I were to plant this branch in the ground and add a little water, in time it would become an olive tree. That is a principle that you can always count on. And that is the alternative to dogma: Principles.”

  Antonio looked carefully at Diego’s face, amazed by the old man’s clarity and facility of thought. “Go on.”

  “Principles are the absolute truths that bridge all religions and all cultures.” Diego picked up a small stone and held it in his open palm. “I give you another example from nature. You see this stone? What will happen if I turn my hand over?”

  “The stone will fall to the ground?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Newtonian physics.”

  “That is right: Newtonian physics. There are natural laws, like gravity or an olive harvest or the fact that the earth circles the sun, and not the other way around. These physical laws cannot be argued; they are self-evident. But there are also interpersonal laws that influence human relationships: love, tolerance, understanding, forgiveness. These laws are as real as the law of gravity. When we abide by them, they do not diminish our lives; they make them more abundant and more unified. And that is the evidence that makes them true.”