Stranger
Page 20
He was. And who would this be?
My name is Santiago, the little man said. He bowed slightly. He might even have clicked his heels. Slightly comical.
Santiago said that if Señor Grima was looking for a child named Meja, then he, Santiago, was the one to help. For a certain amount, Santiago said, I can take you to her.
What amount? Grima asked.
Santiago gave a number and then ducked his head as if the asking price might be too exorbitant.
How do I know who you are? Grima asked.
I am Santiago. I can help you find the child.
Grima studied him. Now? he asked.
She has just arrived. With the girl named Íso. If we do not go today, you will miss her. Perhaps you would like to prepare, Santiago said. Shave, bathe, dress in your good clothes. When you are ready, I will take you to the child. You will check out, take your bags. Everything will happen quickly. Again, Santiago made a movement with his head, very appealing and convivial.
Grima stepped back into his room and did as Santiago had suggested. He shaved and showered, and then he dressed in black pants and slipped into his boots and lastly buttoned up his shirt. He took his passport and his wallet. His small valise. He had a phone, and the phone had a camera. He would take photos. He would hopefully retrieve the child. But of course everything was unknown here and unpredictable and shifty. The people were friendly but impervious. He might find himself on the verge of understanding, and then the clarity slipped away, like a fish that slips by in the shallows of a fast-flowing river. He missed the river near his home. He missed the certainty. He was tired.
They went to the pier by foot. As they walked, Santiago pointed out vistas, and he said in Spanish the names of the various sights as they passed. He said that he was a carpenter by trade. Business was slow. Therefore a livelihood must be made by other means. No? He said that most recently he had built windows for a customer but the customer had been unhappy and had refused to pay. But that was not the worst of it. The customer had spoken poorly of him, had spread stories of his incompetence. This we cannot do, take away a man’s honour. He stopped speaking and took Grima’s elbow and guided him down the hill towards the pier.
They boarded a boat that could easily have held thirty. But there were only three: Grima, Santiago, and the driver, a young man who appeared to know Santiago well. His name was Daniel. The crossing was rough. The wind was high, the water choppy. It was impossible to speak and so they sat, Santiago and Grima, in the middle of the boat, and Grima watched the landscape and the sky and he viewed the volcanoes in three directions, and though there were other boats on the lake, it seemed that they were all alone.
They landed on a solitary beach where an egret watched imperiously and then lifted into the wind and floated away.
What is this place? Grima asked. He saw no habitation and little indication that there was a nearby village.
Santiago pointed up the hill. A short walk, he said. It is better that we arrive unannounced.
Daniel had joined them. He held a machete with which he would clear a path. He led and Santiago took up the rear. Grima was not in the best of shape and soon he was panting and breathing heavily. They paused on a promontory and Santiago produced a sweating bottle of water and handed it to Grima. He took it and he drank copiously, aware of the heat, and his own thirst, and at the back of his brain, a slight ticking of alarm.
They walked on. The light above grew brighter. The sun bore down. Grima thought that he had chosen poorly. And then he thought that he must now trust. And then he panicked. And breathed. Don’t be foolish, he thought. But of course he was foolish. And he had chosen poorly. He thought that he might die up here on this hill, with the indifferent volcanoes looking down on his body, and with the lake lying like a jewel below. And he thought that even if he could understand what was to come to pass, he was powerless to help himself. He was breathing heavily again, and he was very thirsty. When he asked for more water, Santiago smiled pitifully and said that he was sorry, but it was all gone. It is finished, he said.
THREE months after Señor Grima disappeared, the police arrived and at the behest of their superiors in the city they questioned the owner of the hotel, and they questioned Santiago, the owner of the carpintería, and they questioned Señora Perdido, the proprietress of a small tienda that carried expensive products desired by foreigners. Discovering nothing, they concluded that Señor Grima’s existence, like every human being’s, was ephemeral and elusive. In any case, they were not being paid anything extra for this inquiry, and so they returned to their work in the city.
At that time, Íso and Meja were staying with an aunt from her father’s side who lived in a northern village, a three-hour bus ride from the lake. Once a week Señora Perdido closed her tienda and travelled north to see her daughter and her granddaughter. Meja was on the verge of walking now. She was fat and happy. Her legs were perhaps a little too chubby. She might be overeating. She always recognized her abuelita. Señora Perdido was sad when she had to say goodbye. But she was happy for Íso.
THE seasons passed. Íso moved home to live with her mother. During the week, she studied at the university in the city and her mother cared for Meja. On weekends she returned to the village and on Saturdays she sometimes walked up to her uncle’s carpintería, where they visited while Meja played in the sawdust and collected blocks of ceiba. There were still times, when Íso sat in her mother’s tienda on a Sunday and she heard the sound of an approaching motorcycle, that she turned her head as if foreseeing his arrival. It was a habit that she would never grow out of, though the leaping of her heart, and the curiosity and the fear, would ultimately disappear. Her memory was fierce. Her spirit fiercer.
And then, during one of the rainy seasons, with a suddenness that was unanticipated, the water of the lake began to rise. It rose ten feet within a month. The rains did not stop and the lake continued to rise. Those who had been imprudent and built their houses close to the shores witnessed the water lap at their doors, and then cover the windows, and eventually all that remained to be seen were the peaks of those houses. Certain villagers, one a Tz’utujil bonesetter in his late nineties, simply shrugged and said that it was the way of the lake. This happened every fifty years. The temperament of nature was both predictable and surprising.
The clinic at Ixchel was threatened. Albañiles were hired to build concrete walls that would hold back the water. Soon, the clinic and its surrounding gardens came to resemble a castle circled on three sides by a vast moat. The high walls hid the panorama of the lake and what remained was a view of the sky, and the volcano Tolimán, which on windy days was obscured by the crown of clouds swirling around its summit.
Fewer and fewer women arrived to take the waters. Eventually, the clinic was shut down. The abandoned buildings fell into disrepair. One afternoon, during a powerful wind, a retaining wall gave way and the water poured in. The paths and the gardens were the first to disappear, and then the clay baldosas along the interior walkway flooded, and then the pools were overwhelmed, and then the wide hall that led to the birthing rooms was covered. The jacaranda trees were the last to go, along with the paja roofs and peaks of the birthing chambers.
All has vanished. These days the site is rumoured to have an abundance of fish that grow to the size of a child’s hand and swim in schools amongst the ruins. The waters are teeming. At night, the fishermen come and sit in their cayucos and cast their nets, their head lanterns lighting up the remains of Ixchel, which lie buried beneath the lake.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THANK YOU to my early readers of this novel—Tom, Larry and Lyne, Ellen and Adrian, Roger and his father, Eddie (who at 103 is the oldest reader I have), and of course Mary, my first reader. I am grateful to Randi Lott, who worked as a nurse and midwife in Santiago de Atitlán, and who generously answered every one of my questions. Thanks to Nikaela, and to her son Gil, who was my most immediate entry into the world of an infant. To my agents, Ellen Levine and Alexa
Stark, thank you. And finally, thank you to Iris Tupholme, my wonderful editor.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID BERGEN is the award-winning author of eight previous novels and a collection of short stories. Among his acclaimed works are The Time in Between, which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize; The Matter with Morris, which was a finalist for the Giller Prize, the winner of the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, and a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; The Age of Hope, which was a finalist for Canada Reads; and his much praised latest novel, Leaving Tomorrow. Bergen lives in Winnipeg.
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PRAISE FOR DAVID BERGEN
WINNER OF THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
WINNER OF THE WRITERS’ TRUST TIMOTHY FINDLEY/MARIAN ENGEL AWARD
FINALIST FOR CANADA READS
FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL’S AWARD FOR FICTION
WINNER OF THE MARGARET LAURENCE AWARD FOR FICTION
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD
“Bergen’s best writing evokes the absence of what has been lost and, even more terribly, what is not there to be found.”
—The Globe and Mail
“David Bergen is, simply put, one of our best modern writers.”
—Jury citation, 2009 Writers’ Trust Timothy Findley/Marian Engel Award
“With his thoughtful dialogue, Bergen makes the characters’ heartache seep off the page.”
—TIME
“Bergen’s characters move and breathe, demonstrating the delicate balance between hope and despair, salvation and damnation.”
—Toronto Star
“In Leaving Tomorrow, Bergen gives us another richly observed life.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
“Leaving Tomorrow is pure pleasure. It . . . deserves to take its place alongside such mid-western Canadian classics as Who Has Seen the Wind and A Complicated Kindness.”
—The Globe and Mail
“Leaving Tomorrow is a contemplative novel full of the hope that comes with youth, but in the end it becomes clear that like life, the journey is the real destination.”
—Toronto Star
“This is a moving and engaging novel of grief and loss, impeccably written and fully imagined.”
—Toronto Star on The Matter with Morris
“A beautifully composed, unflinching and harrowing story. Perhaps the best fiction yet to confront and comprehend the legacy of Vietnam.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on The Time in Between
“David Bergen is a master of taut, spare prose that’s both erotic and hypnotic. Set mostly in modern-day Vietnam, The Time in Between is a deeply moving meditation on love and loss, truth and its elusiveness, and a compelling portrait of a haunted man, Charles Boatman, and his daughter who seeks to solve the mystery of his disappearance.”
—MIRIAM TOEWS
“The Time in Between is about how children inherit their parents’ ghosts and the elusive nature of grace. It also makes a stunning connection between the wars that are fought out in the world, and the ones that cleave families in private. Ravishingly told and deeply felt, it’s a huge accomplishment.”
—MICHAEL REDHILL, author of Martin Sloane
“The Time in Between is a spare, suspenseful meditation on the long reach of war—to the places where it is fought, the people who fight it, and the people who love those people. In portraying the lingering devastation left in one soldier’s life by a war he fought a generation ago, Bergen’s novel could not be timelier or more chilling.”
—JENNIFER EGAN, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad
“Part war story . . . part expatriate novel, too, as if A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises had been rolled into one.”
—Chicago Tribune on The Time in Between
“The Time in Between explores our need to understand the relationship between love and duty. . . . A subtle and elegantly written novel by an author in complete command of his talent.”
—Jury citation, 2005 Scotiabank Giller Prize
“You like suspense? Sure you do. And in the first thirty pages of his new novel, David Bergen puts on a clinic . . . the novel speeds along in his characteristically exquisite prose. There isn’t an adverb out of place; in fact, there’s hardly an adverb to be found at all. The remarkable feat here is that language this spare can say so much.”
—The Walrus on The Retreat
“It is impossible not to compare David Bergen’s new novel to the work of Richard Ford. . . . A magical piece of writing. . . . It is taut, affecting and lovely, one of those wonderful works that bears reading and rereading and that in its hard crystalline prose does everything right.”
—Calgary Herald on The Case of Lena S.
“A finely observed first novel. . . . David Bergen explores what happens when the simplest of contemporary souls asks the biggest questions.”
—The New York Times on A Year of Lesser
“Impressive. . . . A revelation with stark, thorny prose and primal attractions reminiscent of early John Updike or Richard Ford. . . . [Bergen’s] writing is implacable, pushing, relentless.”
—The Globe and Mail
ALSO BY DAVID BERGEN
Leaving Tomorrow (2014)
The Age of Hope (2012)
The Matter with Morris (2010)
The Retreat (2008)
The Time in Between (2005)
The Case of Lena S. (2002)
See the Child (1999)
A Year of Lesser (1996)
Sitting Opposite My Brother (1993)
CREDITS
COVER PHOTOGRAPHY
Woman: Rekha Garton/Arcangel Images
Textile: Danita Delimont/Getty Images
INTERIOR PHOTOGRAPHY
Appears courtesy of the photographer, Tom Waters
COPYRIGHT
STRANGER
Copyright © 2016 by David Bergen.
All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition: July 2016 ISBN: 9781443450997
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