The Book of Lost Saints

by Daniel José Older

  * * *

  “We have to … we have to get him to a hospital…” Aliceana is flailing her arms when I emerge from the gray haze of Ramón’s broken subconscious. Only a few seconds have passed. I settle in an upper corner of the room, nestled between two shelves full of colorful alphabet books and board games. “He could be…”

  Kacique is shaking his head before she even finishes the thought. “They will arrest him and all of us. They know the people from the club will be trying to get treatment.”

  “But he … he needs to get checked. We need X-rays, bloodwork, a surgeon maybe.”

  “I know,” Kacique says quietly. “And believe me when I say it’s worse for him if we try to get him out of here. He will end up in prison. At least here he’s in our care. Your care.”

  “But I’m … I have nothing. I don’t even have gloves. What can I do, Kacique?” Aliceana veers between sorrow and frustration, her eyes darting around the room for something to make sense of all this.

  Adina stands beside her, puts a hand on her shoulder. “They have some supplies here. They’ve been keeping a first-aid kit stocked up to take care of Adriana. There are bandages and…”

  “He doesn’t need bandages.” Aliceana steps away, shrugs off Adina’s caress. “He needs a hospital. You guys don’t understand. He could be hemorrhaging, he could seize, he could go into cardiac arrest. You don’t understand.”

  Catabalas stands. “No, we do understand. You don’t understand.”

  Aliceana glares at him.

  “This is what life is here. This is the resistance. We do what we do on the edge of what’s allowed and any moment, they can take us away. They already have, again and again, Aliceana. They did tonight, they will tomorrow. We don’t know why they do one time and not the other, but we still do what we do to be alive because that’s the only way to be alive. We’re barely out of the Special Period, barely scraping by. Tonight, we threw an illegal party for all the gays in Havana! In the basement of the Gran Teatro. Do you realize the sheer amount of illegality in that? The only reason we were able to make it happen at all is because that famous foreigner was in town with his entourage and the government knows if they lay a finger on him it’s an international incident that they don’t want. And then he left, and here we are. Ramón, no offense, is not quite so famous yet. Now they are escouring the streets for people who had anything to do with that party, and Ramón is one of those people. In fact, he’s the most public one, because he was the DJ. They don’t have his name, but they saw him, they hit him. If we take him out of here, he will get picked up and so will we all. Ramón they’ll maybe let free in a day or two, because he is American. Me? Probably ten years if ever, given all I’ve done. Kacique maybe they kill on the spot. Okay? Can we make it more clear to you?”

  Aliceana nods slowly. “I know all that. I do…”

  “You are afraid. You care about your man,” Kacique offers. “We know this too. The best we can give is what little supplies we have. In the morning, the streets will be clear and we can do what we have to do. If we lie low tonight.”

  “And Yaniris is a nurse,” Catabalas says, smiling for the first time since we’ve arrived.

  “Ay, no, Cati, por favor.” Yaniris’s hair is locked and pulled behind her head. She wears frameless glasses and a white button-down shirt so ginormous she practically swims in it. Maybe it’s her father’s. She stands up but stays partially shielded by Catabalas, her skinny shoulders slouched forward, long arms waving away the idea.

  “Really?” Aliceana asks.

  “I was … in school … for medicine. But I had to leave.”

  “Do you know how to take a blood pressure?”

  The girl brightens a little; her eyebrows raise as she nods. “Of course, yes!”

  “Come on, then, I guess we gotta start somewhere. Let’s get vital signs and see what we got, yeah?”

  Somewhere in the midst of all that arguing, Aliceana made the slightest of pivots inside herself. It was so smooth I didn’t even catch it. She had been Aliceana the Worried Lover; now she is Dr. Mendoza, on scene to assess her patient. It’s probably for the best that she doesn’t know she’s carrying his child yet. The boys are right: There are no other options. She has every right to let her sorrow collapse her, for a few minutes anyway, but she’s also the only medical care Ramón’s going to get for a while. We need her.

  Yaniris’s slender brown hands tremble as she wraps the cuff around Ramón’s arm and starts squeezing it tight. “Tranquila, mami,” Aliceana whispers.

  The girl nods but doesn’t look any calmer. “Ciento-cincuenta por ochenta.”

  Aliceana looks at the ceiling. “Pulso.”

  Yaniris puts two fingers up to Ramón’s neck.

  “Take it at the wrist,” Aliceana says. “La mano.”

  A moment passes. No one in the room seems to be breathing at all. “Setenta y ocho,” Yaniris finally says.

  Aliceana allows herself the tiniest of smiles and everyone else sees it and exhales. “Not bad,” she whispers. Then she looks down, directs her full attention to Ramón. I’m across the room in seconds, slipping along the surface of her back and then entering, careening through all those synapses and vesicles, past avalanches of anatomical sketches and equations and then I’m watching Ramón’s chest rise with each breath, studying the tension in his face, asking tiny, indescribable questions of each detail of his body.

  “Stay with us, Ramón,” Aliceana says, kneeling beside him, and I silently repeat the words to myself, over and over. It is a prayer made from both love and selfishness. I have come to adore this lug of a nephew; and not just because his beating heart pulled me like a lifeline from the abyss. He is a profound and soulful beast, and I wouldn’t trade him for anyone.

  And without him, I’m sure I’ll disappear forever, a never answered question.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The first time it happens, I’m in my regular spot in the center of my room. The large crack still creases in a long arch down the wall and splits into four smaller ones. The sun is about to set, paints the room orange. My mind carries the echoes of laugher; Guillermo and Roca Sanchez were doing another comedy routine in the yard and the whole world had stopped to watch. Guillermo put on the affect of a guard and goose-stepped in circles while Roca Sanchez mimed taking a shit and then offered it up as a tasty dinner to Guillermo. Total, perfect nonsense. Also, a terrific way to get shot, but crowds of laughing prisoners make it harder to tell what’s going on from the tower. And anyway, we need laughter. Need it so badly that a silly mime routine, replayed over and over with almost no variation, somehow becomes more hilarious with each identical repeat. Gruff, uncertain glares become smiles and then giggles. Because we are hungry. We are in need. We are dying. And this is something altogether different. At first, my body didn’t recognize that strange trembling, the noise coming out of my open mouth, the sudden release. Then I looked around and everyone else was doing it too. Laughter.

  The memory of it stays plastered across my face in a lopsided grin hours later. I’m still tingling with it when I assume my position in the center of my cell. And there are the cracks, dipping wide and splitting; there’s the part where the wall bulges outward slightly, fading sunlight glints off the top, a gentle shadow below.

  The demons always come first. I have accepted that. Today they are the same ones as usual: faceless, bearded soldiers, the judge from however many years ago, my beautiful family—also without faces. They crowd around me and next comes the part where I destroy them all—its own kind of nightmare, because I take no pleasure in their annihilation. It is a grim duty I must perform; a nightly rite of passage to get somewhere peaceful. And I do and I do and in tatters they slink back to their dark corridors, leaving only the hoarse echoes of their promise to return.

  The next nightmare is the depths of loneliness. This one took longer to move past than the demons. I still cry for what must be hours, allowing all that emptiness to roar up inside me. Firs
t it’s everyone I’ve ever loved and the knowledge of how far away and unreachable they are to me. So if you ever wonder what we, the disappeared, dream of in our darkest hours, know that it is you: those who remain. And we dream of each other, catalogues of the dead and forgotten; we wonder which are still out there in some tiny hole, praying for death or praying for life, dreaming of us, fighting off demon memories and then supreme loneliness.

  And then.

  And then.

  Something happens.

  There is a place beyond all that.

  I learned that sometimes, when I sit with it long enough, when I allow it in, the sadness of being alone dissipates. It wants to have its say, wants to be given its due. When I fight it, it stays, but not fighting means balancing on that thread-thin precipice between uneasy peace and falling over the deep into infinite unfathomable sorrow.

  Today I get there. I think the laughter buffeted me through; I brought it with me, an unruly crew of angels into the pit of hell. An easiness comes over my body, even the ache that pulses forever down my back and through my hips, it’s a familiar, comfortable pounding now. A reminder of my body. I accept it. I accept it and I accept the lengthening shadows across my wall, the dull haze night casts on my room, the cracks and subtle indentations that vanish in the darkness. I accept it.

  I close my eyes, and when I open them, I see myself.

  It is not a perfect image. The contours are ragged, incomplete lines. As it resolves, I am horrified. What a slender husk of a human being I have become. Are there any parts of me still left from my childhood? The chin. My chin still juts out just so—defiantly, a teacher once told me, like Nilda’s, if I’m honest with myself. My favorite part of Nilda. Another phantom I can’t get distracted by. My hair is raggedy, cropped short. My clavicles pop out from my chest, you can see them beneath the filthy shirt I wear.

  Surely, I am dreaming.

  I accept.

  It’s so much more pleasant than the hells I’m used to, this dream, which is perhaps not a dream at all. To continue my inspection: I’m pleased how straight my spine is in spite of it all. I’d imagined myself hunched over and decrepit somehow. Also, a few bruises speckle my arms and legs, some of them I know to be from at least a year ago. They persist, but so do I, it seems. Something else: I am worn to the bone, yes, but the air still moves around me with deference; my lines slide gracefully into each other, form angles that sit just right on my skin. All these parts of me, all I have lived: They combine to form a rather elegant whole.

  Perhaps this is not a dream at all, no more than anything else I’ve lived through. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

  I accept.

  * * *

  “What do you think?” Kacique and Aliceana sit in two chairs that are clearly designed for people much smaller than them. They’re sipping ration coffee that Cinco had made upstairs and brought down on a tray to much fanfare and applause.

  Aliceana rubs her eyes. “I don’t know. Could be so many different things going on inside him. I don’t know.” She looks up at him, smiles. “Kacique, listen, I’m sorry for earlier, I was being an ass…”

  The big man silences her with a wave of his hand. “Tsh! Stop. We are all terrified in different ways, all for good reasons. And you, Aliceana, you are out of your element, of course.”

  “Of course. I just meant … Thank you.”

  Kacique rolls his eyes. “De nada.”

  “I guess one person got his wish, at least.” Aliceana nods at the far corner of the room where Catabalas and Yaniris are curled up together inside a giant womb-shaped chair.

  “It’s about time that boy got some action.” Kacique chuckles.

  “When do you think it’ll be safe to move Ramón?”

  A dull thump sounds from upstairs. Kacique leaps to his feet, crosses the room in three long strides, and taps Catabalas.

  “¿Qué pasó, carajo?”

  “La puerta.”

  Catabalas shakes sleep off as he fast-walks up the stairs. He pauses at the landing, frowns down at Yaniris’s curled-up body, and trades a solemn glance with Kacique. Then the door closes and he’s gone.

  Kacique crosses back to Aliceana. “Adriana taps her cane on the floor when someone comes to the door. It’s the alert. That’s all. Could be anyone.”

  They sit, sip at the dregs of their coffees.

  Adina must’ve woken up when Catabalas rushed past the couch where she’d been sleeping. She pulls a child-sized chair up beside Aliceana’s. “What’s the plan?”

  Aliceana shrugs. “I don’t know. We gotta get him out of here soon.”

  “Clear,” Catabalas says from the top of the stairs. “Ya se fueron. No fue nada, un vendedor. A guy that sells things, is all.”

  He walks slowly down the stairs, careful not to creak them too loudly, and snuggles up around Yaniris.

  Aliceana turns to Kacique. “And now?”

  “We wait till mid-morning. Then we assess.” He looks away for a second and then meets her eyes. “I am sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Aliceana stands, puts her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure you saved his life.”

  She walks over to the bed and nuzzles up against Ramón’s unconscious body.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Alone in my cell, hovering just above my body, I remember Padre Sebastián’s words. These walls cannot confine me. I cannot be confined.

  It’s been what? Several months? Yes. At least three full moons have passed since that first night. Since realizing it wasn’t a dream. And even that knowledge—having a sense of time, a connection to something besides these same dead cracks in the unchanging walls—this is a sign of my triumph. Everything is different now. I have to be cautious because the others will notice the extra something I carry with me and I don’t want that kind of attention. It’s still like a shiny new gift and I need time to think. Time to plot.

  Yesterday a guard was staring at me. Not like he wanted to carry me off—those wide eyes weren’t hungry. And it wasn’t suspicion either. Those are the two kinds of elongated looks we get from guards. This was different. His eyebrows were both raised, his mouth slightly open. He was so young, with pretty brown eyes and a gentle goatee. When I caught him staring he didn’t look away, just closed up his face into a pout.

  I almost smiled at him. In my imagination, this is what people who are free do. A cute boy is caught off guard by the sunlight reflected off a pretty girl as she passes. His mouth drops open because, more than just sexy, there is something about her, something unbridled, that radiates with life. She sees how his young eyes drink her in, the sway of her hips, her neckline, and she favors him with a delicate smile. It reveals just enough, this smile, like the light blouse she wears that reveals the tops of her breasts: a hint. A secret. And then the moment is over and the girl struts along down the causeway and the boy goes home to write poetry about her and drink wine and masturbate.

  But this place and that freedom know nothing of each other. I pushed the smile away from my face, didn’t even allow a coy nod. I can’t afford the risk, not now especially. So I turned and as simply as I could, I walked away.

  It was the saddest moment I’ve had since I learned how to separate myself. Mostly, I wander in strange, impossible circles through the prison, learning my limitations. When I stay away from myself for too long, I feel my already barely there presence begin to fade. It’s like being in an ocean, miles from shore, and feeling yourself become gradually too tired to swim. The first time I barely made it back before evaporating completely into the ether.

  But still, a strange joy pervades me.

  Tonight I lift away from myself, through the prickling resistance of concrete and out into the sky. I settle in a cell where there’s some quiet chatter. Edgardo Gil and Tesoro Milán. I don’t like either of them much; they used to clown Padre Sebastián during his sermons and not in the funny playful way. They were just assholes. Their cells are next to each other and they are muttering from their windows.

&n
bsp; Is it settled?

  It is.

  Do we like them?

  Eh … They are acceptable.

  If it is true, when?

  Next week. I will have word for certain.

  I am skeptical.

  You should be. But … we don’t have much choice, you know.

  I know.

  A few moments of silence pass between them.

  Alright.

  Okay.

  Tomorrow, we’ll see what we see.

  Hm.

  When I’m sure they’re done, I swoop up through the ceiling, past the second, third, and fourth levels, out into the night, above the tower even and still higher until I feel the edge of emptiness creep over me.

  * * *

  Ramón blinks twice and the world comes into focus around him. I had felt this coming: His body shuddered and creaked back into normal working condition a few minutes before his mind did. First his heart sped up and the suddenness of it broke me out of my memory-dreams. It’s so much more powerful than that other bleating cycle of life inside Aliceana, who lies huddled up against Ramón. The heart thump-thumped out of its slow delirium and his blood flushed with new vitality through each vessel, pumping life into the tiny veinules that curl and rivulet across his inner flesh.

  The spark rose up inside and then Ramón opened his eyes and now he’s smiling, trying to figure out why there are children’s paintings on the walls around him and stroking his hand idly through Aliceana’s straight black hair. For a moment, I revel in this small victory. Ramón is alive. He is awake. This matters more to me than I was prepared for. Inside him, I shudder, blissful at his consciousness but horrified by how close we came to losing him. This man whom I have inhabited the inner world of for months now. This man who barely knows me but knows me so well. We live.