by Michael Helm
“One of them happened to you. Your September eleventh.”
“Yes. Five months before I was born.” He explained that the troubles became his about ’77, when he was old enough to attribute the absence he sensed to a cause. “I grew up into a kind of obsession about the events in the months after I was conceived, and about my father’s murder. When I began university I had every intention of continuing my life at home. It wasn’t as if we were all in shadow all the time. But one day I was out with a girl and her friend – these are young people, students, in most respects idealistic, I thought – and it came to light that they wanted to know nothing more about that period. They had chosen to avoid the subject, to let it go by. It was a small moment, but right then I knew I had to decide, either to stay and devote myself to sharpening this national memory or to leave the country and choose a different life.”
“That’s a lot to let go of.”
“Less than you might suppose. I ended up choosing both. The country’s still with me.”
She sensed he’d keep going if she prompted him. He’d release the obsession like this, in tellings, again and again, as he needed. This expert in progressive investments.
“You told me when we first met that you were in the resistance movement.”
“Did I? That’s embarrassing. I would have been trying to impress you.”
“No. I was peppering you with questions. You finally just mentioned it. But because you did, you’ve come to mind, now that I’m researching the coup.”
He looked at her somewhat searchingly, then smiled. “I guess this isn’t a school project.”
“I have a list of names. I’ve typed them out.” She produced the list and slid it across to him. “Fifteen names. Seven are in the Rettig Report. I have a kind of picture of what happened to them, how they might be connected. Of the other eight, I know about these two – they’re Americans – and this German, but not these five. I don’t know where to look to find their stories.” She was trying not to sound too intent.
“I know where to look. But it might involve disturbing people’s memories, and that’s no small thing, especially if it goes beyond what’s already on the record. Why do you want to know all this?”
How to answer? Because she’d entered a city. Because she was afraid for her father, as if it was all still happening, he was still there, and her actions could get him out, or trap him. And because in her new world everything seemed to ride on her willingness not to back down from her fears.
She told Eduardo it was about her father. She said his name. She said he was down there in ’73 and she wanted to know what happened to him.
“How old was he?”
“About twenty-three.”
“Is he Canadian? Was he then?”
“Yes. He was a student.”
“But he won’t tell you what happened.”
“A little. Not much. The seven in the report were arrested from the same address. Two were murdered and accounted for. The rest were all disappeared. The last line on them is the same in every instance. They’re ‘presumed to have died as a result –’”
“‘Of the violence prevailing in the country at the time.’”
“Yes.” This man’s country was haunted. It must have ghosts on every street. Harold had been there for only a few months and he was still haunted. It was only human to feel responsible for your bad luck.
She watched Eduardo fold the list and put it in his shirt pocket.
“There’s a story somewhere for every name, but not all the stories get told. I’ll see what I can find out. As long as you’re willing to hear what I learn.”
She nodded. She was very close now to the hard fact of who she had become.
The topic then shifted to the one person they had in common, Renner, whom they’d both lost track of, and it wasn’t her father or Eduardo she thought of now on the way home, but Renner, as she and Eduardo remembered him. Renner had had a crush on her and trailed around doing impressions of everyone they met. The diminuendo of the shy girl serving them beer in a pitcher, the professor’s stentorian address, the stutters and pauses of the campus radio news reader. He did them everywhere, the impressions – do him, do her, they were always saying – before class, on the phone, at parties, and Renner would always add an incongruity, a misfit word or two in the wrong diction, and make them nearly fall over laughing. Cathectic, adamantine, educe. She’d been inspired to write down the best-sounding words and look them up later. He would never say where he got them from or if he knew what they meant. It was the only mystery that attached to him, and she almost fell for it.
Assuasive, unregenerate, inexpiable, effeir.
They’d hang out in the music store, and who was she then, so full of words and music? And the store had led her to the rest of her life because of Eduardo’s co-worker, what’s his name, the Mozambican, Armando. He was the one who’d first told her about GROUND, which she’d remember a few years later. GROUND had gathered the evidence to prove that a rich family in Maputo had tried to kill him. That was the what but she couldn’t remember the why. No doubt he’d asked the wrong whats and whys.
And upon this thought, Harold came back to mind.
He had spent the mid-afternoon at a farmer’s market for the purpose of later being where he now found himself, chopping herbs for his soup in a rich, transporting haze. The hour of preparation was better even than that of the dinner itself. The ritual and pleasure had the authority of goodness. One of the ways of discerning goodness, as Richard Hooker had it, was through “the observation of those signs and tokens, which being annexed always unto goodness, argue that where they are found, there also goodness is.” Hooker hadn’t been thinking of garlic and fennel, but André added him to the air anyway and found the mix agreeable.
As he turned down the flame, the phone rang. He considered ignoring it, but the soup had to simmer for twenty minutes and no longer needed his attention, a quality of the finishing stage that on some days recommended it.
The call display was lit up with Harold’s name. Now there was something else in the air. Not, he hoped, an undertone of spoilage. He summoned his voice and said hello. The pleasantries lasted ten seconds.
“Will you hear a confession over the phone?” Harold forced a laugh.
“I’m not that variety of priest, but of course we can talk.”
“One day I believe in talking cures, the next I don’t. I’ve voiced both opinions to my daughter.”
By the time he’d turned the soup off to cool he’d heard the story of Harold’s trials with Rosemary, of his mishandling her romantic refusals, and of last night’s events; how, along with some bruises, Rosemary’s Rodrigo had given Harold the power to determine the young man’s fate.
“I behaved like an ass, but nothing warranted his assault on me. Frankly I feel vindicated.”
Harold seemed not to know there were always more things in the balance than anyone could guess at.
“What did you want to confess, Harold?”
“Well, to begin, I wanted to tell you that I know what kind of man I am. I’m a pretty sorry creature. You must have known this about me since we met. I’ve known it always. But it’s a very real condition, full of inalterable facts. And so in being a sorry creature, I’ve learned a truth. It’s that people like you – the devout – you live in illusion. You do your work in the world upon an illusory belief, and I fail to measure up upon the sure knowledge that your kind are mistaken. Of course you know some things that I don’t, other truths, but you never wade into them without your mantle of illusion. I confess that I judge you, Father. It’s a long, harsh judgment. I’ll spare you the exact wording.”
His voice was full. This wasn’t a confession or judgment, but a proclamation, as if to unleash the power of his word upon whatever was troubling the borders of his life. But he didn’t know what it was out there, or even where the borders were. The man had been wandering lost for a long time.
“You’ve not called me in the ho
pe I’ll bring you to a different light.”
“That light of yours isn’t available to me. It’s just not fucking available.”
The dull profanity might have betrayed more passion than it did.
“Have you ever expressed these beliefs to your family?”
“That’s not our mode. We’re trapped in this sort of loop. Each in our own orbit around some fixed point we’ve never named. We’re thousands of miles apart and there is no closing that distance. Some physics of shame and regret won’t allow it.”
“I see.”
“This is where you tell me I’m wrong, and cite your experience with families in trouble. But I’m not talking about them.”
“You could have had this conversation by yourself.”
“Maybe. But I never have. Not all of it at once.”
The sorry creature made the point that he didn’t feel sorry for himself. “At least I know to struggle against grand illusions.” Then he stressed that though he judged people like André and Rosemary, he admired them “at some level” for their good works.
“The hope of salvation is incredibly durable,” Harold said, “for being such a thin tissue, so thin anyone could see through it if they held it to the right light.”
“The light of reason.”
“I know I’m drawing the same old lines, but yes.”
The image came to André of a man who lived with a ticking inside him. He’d dreamt it once. He’s standing behind this man whose face he never sees. The man asks him to remove the ticking. He feels the knife in his hand, lifts it, and cuts at the base of the neck. The pain is accepted, the man only wants to know what’s there. And what’s there is a shell of some sort, like a pecan shell. He takes it out and pries open the top half, and there inside is a red insect, the size of his thumbnail, kicking its hind legs against the shell wall. Tick. Tick. What is it? the man wants to know, afraid to turn and look. And André knows the answer but can’t find the word. He can’t utter a syllable. And when the dream ended and he woke, he still didn’t know the word.
“It isn’t that you don’t believe in salvation, Harold, it’s that you don’t want it. To find out why, you might have to trust some other grand illusions. If not talking cures, then therapies. If not therapies, then maybe a useful mantra or two. Or go further into the one you do trust – learning. You certainly won’t find salvation in any of those, but you might find what you’re looking for. A temporary reprieve. I can’t give you that.”
“It might surprise you to learn that I do have convictions. And I have no choice but to follow them, as you must follow yours.”
“And where does following them take you?”
“The easy thing would be to let it go, the assault. But that’s not the right course of action. This kid is violent. I don’t know his story, but those who’ve heard it know he’s violent too. He must have done a lot worse than beat up a fool to have had it follow him all the way here. And men like him don’t get cured of violence.”
“That’s not always true.”
“Well it’s true in this case, Father. If you want to see them, I have the wounds to prove it.”
“I know Rodrigo. He came with Rosemary to the church a few times. Do you think he’s the one who attacked your daughter, is that it?”
“If I thought that, if I was sure of it, I wouldn’t be talking to you. What I do think is that he attacked me.”
“Yet you haven’t called the police.”
“I want him never to hurt anyone again. Or at least not anyone here. In my country.”
“So you’ve called me. And you’re giving me a choice.”
“I’m doing the right thing, aren’t I? Even for him?”
Harold was involving him so that what was ahead would look better to Rosemary, as if it wasn’t vengeance.
“I’m sorry you’re in this position,” said Harold. “But you need to see that I have thought it through.”
“Reasoning gets us only partway to goodness.”
“I’ll let it take me as far as it goes. All I’m hoping for is a good night’s sleep.”
When he turned off the phone Harold felt the heavy silence. For some reason he was sitting naked in his entranceway, with his back to a wall. The silence and nakedness together conducted him along some avenue of thought to Marian. For all their shouting at the end, what the marriage had really suffered from had begun in silences, a poverty of admissions.
It was dark now. He’d kept the blinds drawn all day. It was time to open them but first he’d get dressed. He didn’t care anymore about keeping up appearances, but there was something to be said for common decency.
Teresa answered. Rodrigo hadn’t appeared there, no. Was there some trouble?
“Just call me if he arrives, okay?”
And she did call, twice that night, wanting Rosemary to explain something, or needing to explain something herself that she wouldn’t say. It would have to do with Rodrigo’s cuts and bruises. She could almost put it together on her own. There’d been trouble in both their places, it seemed. Teresa knew of no others Rodrigo would run to.
The next day Rosemary asked around. His circles were very small – past employers, the coordinator at the language school (who couldn’t remember him), people he’d met once or twice at the church – but no one had seen him. She hoped faintly that in the part of his life she knew nothing about there was someone to take him in or give him money to catch a bus. There was a chance that he’d sought her out at St. Eustace and missed her. The church itself would offer no sanctuary. If the police became involved, investigating an assault charge, all the tacit agreements were off. Father André was reluctant to offer a living space to any of Rosemary’s cases to begin with. The truth was, he didn’t want to know about them.
She thought he might need to come back to the house but was ashamed or afraid, so she stayed out but left a note in simple English on the counter telling him to leave a time and place to meet. She said she wasn’t angry but they had to arrange some things for him. These were the things she’d conjured for him over the weeks, an apartment, a better job, nothing more. They were still possible and he needed to know, as she needed. Whenever she thought of her life before what Harold had called her conversion, it returned to her badly preserved, because she didn’t remember what things like hope had meant to her then. Hope and love and service to others. Had she thought of them at all? This woman carrying around not a metaphysical bone in her body? Had she imagined they existed inside herself, or that they were independent of her, as forces in the world, like goodness and duty, powerful running waters that humans could wade into. This woman, the woman she’d once been, must have had some notions worth her existence, but as she recalled her, the younger Rosemary came up a little flat, a movie character, someone who made sense too neatly. Rosemary didn’t really believe in her. And the person she did believe in was a mystery, until now, when she recalled all at once that she had survived for a long time by holding a small hope that she could never acknowledge to herself, a hope that her life might still open up into meaning.
And it had been granted her, conferred, as grace was conferred. And now it turned out that though she had been a worthy keeper of hope, she was unworthy of the meaning because she was full of righteous pride. There was no one outside of her sister and her small network that wasn’t subject to it. Father André had often felt her pride, and Harold, and city politicians and clergy from the diocese, those who assumed that she was at heart sentimental – how else could she be doing this work? – and that the sentimental were a little stupid. She’d often found leverage in playing dumb, leading them into their condescension and then trapping them. The Lord was less retributive these days than in His Old Testament youth, but she was quite willing to take up the slack. What was the difference between doing God’s work and playing God? Between saving, and sorting the living from the dead? Wasn’t God full of surprises and correctives? Wasn’t He capable of deception?
It was noon when the ca
ll came. She’d spent the morning tracking late items from the audio library, sitting at her terminal, and then she was standing in a pizza joint staring at a display of slices, trying to decide, the Margherita or the Très Spicy, and felt a heat in her face that she thought was the oven but then it wasn’t, it was a flush of dread, dizzying dread, and she had to leave and take a seat on a parkette bench. And that’s when Father André called her cell. He said, “You need to go home right away. Rodrigo’s been detained. I’ll meet you at the house.” A cyclist on the sidewalk sent street-tough pigeons flutterflopping and she knew the whole bleak ending, awaiting her.
Father André was there with the removals men, two of them. One stood near the front door, an overweight, smiling man who looked a little embarrassed or apologetic. Father André was sitting next to Rodrigo on the couch. Across from them was a smaller man with a buzz cut and a rat-tail who looked once at Rosemary as she came in and didn’t so much as nod to her. The interview was well over. Out of deference to Father André the officers had delayed their arrest until she arrived.
Rodrigo hadn’t looked at her. Did he think she’d turned him in?
“Don’t be afraid,” she told him. He kept his eyes down. She addressed the rat-tailed man. “What’s your name, your first name?”
“Damon.”
“Well, Damon, you can glare at him all you want but he knows not to fear you. And you shouldn’t fear him.”
“I don’t.”
“But you should fear God. Otherwise you have to fear men and their natures, right, André? And your fears will never hold still for you.”
“I got him wrapped up pretty good right now,” said Damon. His expression was of amusement and contempt.
Father André stood. “May I talk to you in the kitchen, Rosemary?”
“The proper place for fear is theological. That’s what you said. This is all about things in their proper place. And mine isn’t in the kitchen. And Rodrigo’s isn’t in the hands of killers. And yours wasn’t to call these guys.” Now she looked to the fat man. “Have you been watching my house all day?”