by Aura Xilonen
And yes, or what the hell ever, I’m trembling.
Aireen’s eyes blink again, generating a little breeze that suffocates me all the more acutely.
I lean in to kiss her.
“No dude, not like that!” She immediately turns her head and my kiss crashes into the corner of her mouth like a wish in a bottle that gets lost in the ocean, without a word, right there, sinking to the bottom. Engulfed, I pull away from Aireen, a stab in my throat as I feel everything spinning around me. I look at her and try to raise a hand toward her to cling to something solid and lean on it, but my legs have turned to glass. A hypodermic shudder in my buttocks presages the crisis and like that, dark as I am, I fall over, knocked out, at her feet.
The fever isn’t breaking,” I hear, sunk deep in dreams.
The voices turn into the crashing of waves.
* * *
[“Do you know what the ocean’s like, little beaner baby?”
“It’s blue.”
“Really it’s more like an earthquake crouched within its own white foam.”
“Jefe, why didn’t you become a poet?”
“Why do you ask, you howling glowworm?”
“Because sometimes I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”]
I open my eyes a crack. All I can see is a blurry glow through a white slit. I’m soaking wet and cold. Someone puts something wet near my mouth and suddenly drips liquid, which I swallow eagerly into my parched throat.
Then I let myself go again.
* * *
[“Mamá, where are you? Are you dead? Why do I remember you alive? Why do I remember your brown eyes and that cloth with blue quetzals on it? Are we just a memory that we’ve been hauling around with us for centuries before our births? Mamá, why does it seem like everything my godmother told me is a lie? Huh? Why do I sometimes dream about you, and you have a strand of wool that my fingers are playing with? Those bits of blue, pink, orange, and purple yarn dangling from your hair—who do they belong to?”]
I wake up sluggish. My eyes dance around until I manage to get them under control. I blink several times to get used to the darkness and return to consciousness, to reason, to the place where a person can make his own decisions. Everything is dark. A small window lets the light from outside trickle in. The curtains are see-through, and the night grays in through the glass. I have no idea where I am. My eyes are like two turds crushed under the weight of shadows. My head no longer hurts, and I feel only a slight pang in my temples that is gradually abating. I turn my head to loosen the muscles in my neck; the mattress on the bed is so soft that it’s bruised every bone in my body. Laboriously, I sit up and perch on the edge of the bed, supporting myself with my feeble arms. My toes brush the floor. It feels like it’s made of wood. The darkness slowly retreats until my eyes are able to snatch a few objects around me: a table with a clock marking the hours in tenuous fluorescent blue, a vanity, a dresser, a wardrobe, and a door.
I place my feet firmly on the floor and stand up, pushing off the bed. A long nightshirt hangs down to my knees. And my fucking belt? Motherfucker, my belt! Where’s my belt? I tiptoe, barefoot. I keep the lights off so nobody will discover I’m alive. I grope around in the dark for my belt with my secret hiding place. There’s nothing. It’s nowhere to be found. I go over to the door and carefully turn the knob. Maybe outside. The latch gives; very slowly, I open it and go out.
* * *
[“And why don’t you like going to the movies, Jefe?”
“Because the doors at the movie theater all fucking squeak when you try to open them quietly.”
“But that happens with novels too, right?”
“You fucking twinkle-dicked bastard, have you been reading the books we’re supposed to be selling and filling them up with fingerprints again?”]
Outside, a lamp mounted on the wall illuminates the long corridor with a dim yellow glow. Several wooden doors, all of them closed, are lined up one after the other. I don’t recognize the place. An Eliason double door is at one end. I walk toward it on my tiptoes and push it open, revealing a large room with hardwood floors. Toward the back of the room, an incandescent spotlight is shining down on a basketball hoop. Dilapidated-looking bleachers rise up on either side. Above them are three or four large windows, two of them with broken panes. There’s not a soul anywhere to be seen. I enter what seems to be a gymnasium or multipurpose space—there are blackboards and two desks with papers stacked up, jenga’d, like brick lollipops. Off to one side, where I hadn’t seen it at first, is a small stage with an upright piano on it. I’ve never seen one in real life, only in photos: when a lady showed up at the bookstore asking for piano sheet music for Mexican music for her daughter and I hauled out a dictionary to look for composers who were riverine, antipodal, from the Nahuatl homeland.
Music has always fucking soothed the crickets inside me; it’s like an oblique soporifying of my soul, oleaginous waves that soak into my hammer, anvil, and stirrup and cease to be part of me; music that rasps melodically in my soul’s legs so it stops hopping about and settles down, drowsily fixed to the surface of my flesh.
I climb up on the stage and approach the fucking instrument. I place my fingertips on the wood and trace its edges with my index finger. Its mahogany is perfect despite the scratches that highlight all the battles it’s experienced, all its wars. I sit down on the black lacquered bench, right in front of the place where the absent keys are supposed to be. I imagine they’re sheltered beneath that wooden carapace. That piano, there in the middle of nowhere, of the perpetual void, velvety with silence, inspires me. I move my hands toward its body. I don’t try to remove the cover from the keyboard: I wouldn’t know what to do next, except maybe destroy the sounds in one fell swoop. I close my eyes so all I feel is the wood under my calluses, under the rough pads of my grooved fingers.
“Do you like it?” I hear a childish voice coming from somewhere in the gym.
“Who’s there?” I ask, startled. The hairs on the back of my neck bristle like hedgehog quills.
“I’d like to learn to play the piano. It’s really pretty when someone plays it.”
“Who are you?”
“Who are you?” the voice replies.
“Come out here or I’ll give you an ass-whupping,” I insist.
“If you give me an ass-whupping, I’ll report you to the human rights people.”
“I don’t care,” I say, looking around wildly, trying to identify where the little voice is coming from.
“They can put you in jail,” it replies.
“Come on, come out here.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re going to give me an ass-whupping.”
“That’s not true. I’m not going to give you anything.”
“Then why did you say it?”
“Because you startled me. It was a joke.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“What’s your name?” it asks.
“Promise you won’t laugh?” I get up from the bench and walk over to one of the curtains and lift it up. Nobody’s there.
“I promise.”
“And you promise you’re going to come out from wherever you are?” I climb down from the stage and look underneath. Nothing there either.
“I can’t promise you that because I don’t know you yet.”
“All right. My name is Liborio. Now you know me. So now it’s your turn.”
“Your name’s Liborio?”
“Yes. What’s yours?”
“Why did you think I was going to laugh?”
“Because people always laugh at my name.”
“Are you embarrassed by your name?”
“Are you coming out or not?”
Out of a gap in the bleachers, near s
ome boxes of balls and rings, a little girl with tawny skin and ochrefied hair appears. Two ribboned braids wrap around her head. She’s wearing a white blouse with colorful flowers embroidered across the chest. She moves toward me in a red wheelchair with yellow trim.
“I thought you were a boy!” I say in surprise.
“No, I’m a girl.”
“And what are you doing here?”
“Same thing as you, dummy. I’m waiting for everybody else to finish dinner so I can go to bed.”
“I’m not waiting for anybody to finish dinner. I’ve been lying over there for a while and . . . How old are you?”
“Why? How old are you?”
“Why do you always answer with a question?”
“You did too, just now.”
“All right. You win. I’m nineteen.”
“Nineteen? You look younger than that.”
“What about you?”
“I’m eight, but I’m about to turn nine.”
“You sound more grown-up than you are.”
She comes closer, almost banging into my shins with her chair. She holds out her hand and says, “I’m Naomi.” I look at her hand and hold out mine. “You’ve got really rough hands. Are you a bricklayer too?”
“Listen, where am I?” I interrupt.
Naomi’s brow furrows. She purses her lips and I can see that she’s missing a tooth.
“Well, you’re here, right?”
“Yes, I know I’m here, but what is this place?”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“It’s Bridge House.”
“Bridge House? And how the fuck did I get here?”
“Mr. Shine doesn’t like bad words.”
I look at the little snotnose, who looks at me with her mouse eyes.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I say to her, babbling, chanting the word quickly and ever more loudly. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“I see you’re awake now.”
I turn to look at the Eliason doors. Walking toward us is the old man who gave me the handkerchief and the money to buy ointments and bandages when I got beaten up by that yup at the bus stop. I recognize him immediately by his gray beard. What was his name? Suddenly, there, right there, I feel fucking ashamed. I don’t know why, but a flush of heat climbs up me, scale by scale, like a row of dominoes tumbling down. I look back at Naomi and see that she’s smiling.
“Words aren’t bad in and of themselves, Naomi,” the old man says when he’s a few yards away from the little girl. “It’s the intent behind them that makes them harmful. Did you notice how quickly this young man can say four letters? If we enter him in a competition, he might even break a world record. Would you like that?”
“Yes!” Naomi cries with gap-toothed delight. “World record in bad words.”
The old man pulls a little package out of his pants pocket and gives it to Naomi.
“I see you’ve already met our fine guest for tonight.”
“Yes. His name is Liborio.” She looks at me. “Liborio, this is Mr. Shine.”
“Abacuc Shine,” he says without looking at me. “But we’d better chat tomorrow, Naomi; it’s time for bed now.”
I interrupt their conversation. “How did I get here?”
Mr. Abacuc grabs Naomi’s wheelchair and starts walking toward the door where he entered. I follow close after them.
“Leo brought you. Leo Zubirat,” he says before pushing open the Eliason doors and leaving the gym. I stand there dumbstruck, dromedaried, bursting with caligulas. I push open the door.
“Who the fucking hell is Leo Zubirat?”
“You see, Naomi?” Mr. Abacuc Shine says placidly. “This boy could break any world record you set for him. No question.”
* * *
[“Let’s see what you think of this, you perversified nonsensicator: ‘I want to hide / my heart outside / tossed by your side / just to be snide.’ Hey? What do you think?”
“Oh, Jefe, all the big-ass books you’ve read in your fucking life, and you write that bullshit.”
“Asshole.”]
The dining room table is long and made of wood. I figure it must sit twelve or fifteen men, or eighteen addos, or thirty kids. The benches are also made of solid, heavy wood. Along the walls of the large room are, in order of appearance, an old TV set mounted on a black stand and facing the table, two windows, two doors, and some framed diplomas, all of them in the name of Mr. Abacuc Shine. One of the doors is open and leads to the kitchen. The other leads to a bathroom with a sink. A bare lightbulb hangs from a black wire and swings gently in a draft of air that’s gusting in from somewhere. A flock of moths is using it to toast their antennae, flinging themselves in kamikaze circles.
“It’s not much, but it’s something,” Mr. Abacuc says as he puts a plate of vegetables, a small bowl of hot soup, and a spoon in front of me.
I sit staring at the soup, in a daze. It has little bits floating on top of it, something like grass. I’m hungry, but I don’t know, I can’t. Mr. Abacuc sits across from me and rests his elbows on the table.
“Naomi’s an extraordinary girl,” he says when he sees me sitting there stupefied. I come out of my tetrahedral introspection. “She wants to be a lawyer when she grows up . . . or something like that.”
He props his chin up on his hands. His gray beard is pushed forward. I can see he’s missing one or two front teeth because his mustache has rolled up and revealed a couple of splotches of darkness toward his palate and tongue.
“And you, how are you doing?” I feel him carefully scrutinizing me.
“What happened to my belt?” That’s the only thing I can think of in response.
“Did you check in the wardrobe in the room where you were? All your belongings should be there—your clothing, your sweats, your belt, all your things. We may be poor here, but we’re honest.” And he lets out a light laugh that resembles the tumulus of a messenger pigeon.
“How long was I out?”
“Let’s see . . . Yesterday, Sunday, Zubirat brought you here at about four or five in the afternoon, and right now it must be about eleven at night. So that would be . . .”—he holds out his wrinkled hands to count on his fingers—“four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Seven hours plus twenty-four. You were asleep almost thirty-one hours, give or take.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“Eat your soup. It tastes awful when it’s cold, and we can’t afford to heat it up again.”
I pull the bowl toward me and dip the spoon into it.
“And did that Zubirat guy come by himself when he left me here?”
“He came by himself. You seemed like you were drunk. We had to carry you in between the two of us so you didn’t collapse again.” He pauses for a long moment while I keep stirring the fodder with my spoon. “I’m asking you this to see what we can do for you—are you taking any kind of drugs, young man?” I stare at him agape. “Crack, coke, pot, molly, special K, angel dust, krokodil, heroin, bennies, LSD, TNT, morphine, glue, solvents, crystal, kitchen sink, belladonna?”
“Are you a doctor or a drug dealer?”
“Neither,” he says, and laughs a little harder, huffing on his mustache. “But it’s good to be informed. I’m asking because you didn’t even have alcohol on your breath. Do you have some sort of illness we should be aware of? Not even the doctor could figure out what was causing your fever.”
* * *
[“Go on, asshole, you write something if you think you’re such hot shit, you trepeditious thermopile.”
“Why me?”]
“Now then,” he tells me back in the bedroom, “you can stay as long as you want, but in exchange you have to return the favor with a little work. Not for me, for the community.”
“Listen, are you religious? Does this place
belong to some sort of cult?”
“Oh, yes,” he laughs, “the cult of the completely screwed.”
Mr. Abacuc closes the door and I hear his footsteps moving away from the battered door. I go to the wardrobe and yes, there’s my belt, hanging on a hook. I pick it up and put it back on like it’s the only lifeline I can cling to to keep me floating above the world.
The first thing I see when I wake up is Naomi’s face above me. Then I realize that a bunch of pipsqueaks are crowded around me, some on the bed and others standing.
“Yeah, I’m telling you, it’s him,” says a skinny, pot-bellied kid.
“But the other guy looks burlier.”
“This guy’s all wormy-looking.”
“Wimpish.”
“Scrawny.”
“Is it really him?”
Unsettled, I sit up, and two or three of the kids slide off the blankets onto the floor.
“He’s mad,” one of them shouts.
“He’s going to hit us!” shouts another.
The mob takes off running, yelling at the top of their lungs, and drains out the door like horned vermin.
“Ignore them,” Naomi tells me. “They’re still really little, and they don’t know that there are laws that protect little kids.”
“What the hell was that?”
Naomi spins around in her wheelchair, the front wheels raised in the air.
“They’re kids—what don’t you get, silly?”
“And what are you doing here?” I demand, scrubbing the sleep away from my eyes.