It Would Be Night in Caracas

by Karina Sainz Borgo

  In no time a convoy of military police officers appeared, as well as a handful of gunmen. I watched them move about, rowdy and bloodthirsty. I wanted to cry out, to warn the young men that there were too many, but my voice abandoned me. The roving gunmen had already brought down two people, a pair of skinny young men who were now lying on the asphalt. One was convulsing and spitting blood from his mouth, like a bull when the matador botches the final sword thrust.

  I returned to the living room and took up the only unopened envelope lying on the table. It was from the Spanish Consulate. I tried to read it by holding it up to the light, to no avail. I went back to the opened letters. One, the electricity bill. The other, which likewise bore a stamp featuring a red-and-white flag, a letter from the Spanish government requesting proof that Julia Peralta, Aurora Peralta’s mother, was still living, so she could continue to collect her pension. As far as I knew, she had died at least five years before. I folded the consulate of Spain’s letter and request in half and tucked them into my trousers, collected the keys, and locked the door.

  Aurora Peralta was dead, but I was still alive.

  I’D NEVER WITNESSED A BIRTH. I hadn’t conceived a child or delivered one. I hadn’t cradled an infant in my arms or dried any tears but my own. Children weren’t born in our family. Instead, elderly women died, undone in the deathbed of their authority. They even reigned at the foot of a grave, just like those who die at the foot of a volcano. I never understood motherhood as anything other than what my mother and I had: a relationship to be maintained and managed, an unobtrusive love expressed through our keeping the world we’d built for two in balance. I had no awareness of its transformative powers until the day my mother took me to see a painting by Arturo Michelena, a painter I’d thought only depicted battles, who raised before me irrefutable proof that giving birth to a child enlightens, that it clarifies the murk and establishes a raison d’être for the womb’s darkness.

  It was his canvas Young Mother that made me wonder, for the first time, what it might mean to carry a child. I was twelve and the artwork was more than a century old. Michelena painted it in 1889, during his golden era. He was living in Paris, had been awarded prizes in several salons, and had even received a medal at the same World’s Fair that featured the Eiffel Tower. Michelena was an Académie Julian alumnus, a moderate cosmopolitan, someone who was a long way from understanding the Salon des Refusés, but he depicted the light of the Valencian valleys in Venezuela as only those who’ve been educated beneath the glare of the tropics can. The light that burns everything.

  I stood before that canvas as if discovering a domestic truth: mothers embody, at the same time, beauty and havoc. Back then I knew nothing of Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina, I ignored the dissatisfied women who committed suicide in the same way I didn’t know about the unhappy women poets who would make me a reader. I hadn’t read Miyó Vestrini and her Órdenes al Corazón, hadn’t heard about the Yolanda Pantin’s shattering Casa o Lobo or Elisa Lerner’s Carriel para la fiesta. I had read Teresa de la Parra’s Ifigenia, but had done so with no understanding of the boredom that drove the young lady from Caracas to write. I was a long way from understanding the grandes dames who would make such a mark on my life and yet, standing before that Michelena canvas, I discovered the woman who was already living inside me. I wasn’t brave, but I wanted to be. I wasn’t beautiful, but I coveted the smooth skin of the fertile woman depicted in that painting before me.

  It was Michelena who made me aware of my curves, who illuminated the havoc of my body through his young mother reclined in the rocking chair, a nymph straight out of The Spinners cradling a child far too big, fair, and healthy for a country afflicted by hunger and war. Looking at the tremor of leaves reflected on her skin, puzzling out the false shadows created by the painter’s palette, I studied the woman’s fleshy form and the slow decline that comes with childbirth. If learning means rectifying one’s ignorance, that morning I was dealt a blow: the strange, tidal pull of beauty that mothers emit, beings of faint perfume, women who shine beneath the morning sun.

  My mother and I walked along Los Caobos, the boulevard of a Frenchified park that a Catalonian engineer, Maragall, planned for 1950s Caracas. We were coming from a Peter and the Wolf show at Teatro Teresa Carreño’s José Félix Ribas concert hall, the largest in Venezuela, located just a few steps from the National Art Gallery. An oasis amid the rest of the country. We stopped at the Francisco Narváez fountain to admire the well-built nymphs, Indian women carved in stone who shared similarities with the María Lionza goddess statue, except that these looked sterner. The fountain they were part of, which the sculptor titled Venezuela, was in the middle of a great mirror of water that had candy wrappers and faded potato chip bags floating in it. A soup swirling with leaves and scraps.

  “Did you like the National Art Gallery?” my mother asked.

  “Uhhh,” I answered as I sucked on the straw of a peach juice box she’d passed me from her handbag.

  “And what did you like best?”

  With her question in mind, I fixed my gaze on the exaggerated breasts of Narváez’s Indians, then looked down at my cracked white shoes.

  “The mother.”

  “Which one?”

  “Michelena’s . . .”

  “Why’s that? I thought you’d like Soto’s Penetrables, or Cruz-Diez’s sculptures.”

  “I did. But I liked the mother. The one in the dress in the pergola.”

  “Ah, no wonder,” said my mother, condescending. “Because of the pink gown?”

  “No,” I stayed silent, basting the words in the little amount of juice that was left. “I like it because it trembles.”

  “Trembles?”

  “Yes.” I made another slurp. “It moves. Trembles. It is and it isn’t. Do you know what I mean? It exists and doesn’t exist . . . it comes and goes. It’s not a picture. It’s alive.”

  My mother gazed at the water. The cicadas were rehearsing their dry-season racket and the morning was seeping away like a Sunday remnant. The cool marble promenade, not vandalized back then, made me want to curl up and take a long siesta. My mother rummaged in her handbag and got out a packet of tissues that she passed me so I could wipe my mouth.

  “And that’s why you like it?”

  “Uh-huh . . .” I responded, not elaborating further. “When I was born, is that how we looked?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like in that picture: large, pink. You know, like cupcakes.”

  “Yes, hija. We looked like that.” My mother’s face crumpled, and she started brushing off her skirt. She closed her handbag and took my hand.

  Inside the profound solitude of a tree- and nymph-filled park, something in that country had begun to prey on us.

  I STUDIED THE EXITS that led to the parking lot. I did the same for the closest Dumpsters, and for the access to the quieter streets. I needed to dispose of Aurora Peralta’s body without drawing attention. If I wanted to stay in her apartment, I couldn’t make a single mistake. I discarded the idea of going to the police. I would be more likely to end up in prison than find someone who would believe my story. I waited until ten in the evening. Bursts of gunfire swept the streets. Bullets, real bullets. The corridors were deserted. People had shut themselves in their homes, afraid. Three hours before, La Mariscala and her troupe had left their stronghold to join the melee on Avenida Urdaneta. The Sons of the Revolution and their armed groups slaughtered a hundred hooded protesters: people who went out to be killed, for hunger and anger are motives enough to die. It was time. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity that everyone else’s confusion and desperation had afforded me.

  Dragging Aurora Peralta to the corridor was far more complicated than expected. Her sixty kilos weighed a ton. I didn’t know which was worse: her weight or her stiffness. I pressed the elevator button. I could hear the elevator clanking against the girders. It was rising through the insides of the building more slowly than ever. When I opened the door
, I realized the space inside was too small. Lying down, Aurora Peralta’s body wouldn’t fit. Her limbs were stiff as hooks. I couldn’t bend her or change her position. My temples were throbbing, my hands trembling. I’d wrapped a shirt soaked in rubbing alcohol over my nose, and now it was suffocating me; meanwhile, my plastic gloves were parboiling my fingers. Sometimes I had the feeling that I wasn’t the one who did all this.

  Standing as I was, facing the open elevator, exhausted, and with her body lying at my feet, I racked my brains for a way out. Dragging her step by step down to the lower floor would be the easiest way to get caught. I couldn’t stay in the corridor either, waiting beside a dead body. The twelve labors of Hercules seemed like trifles compared with this. I knew just one thing and clung to it: this dead woman was the only thing that could keep me alive. I had to play my cards right if I wanted to stay in her home.

  I heaved Aurora Peralta’s body back along the corridor to the apartment. Changing the direction of her body to put her legs in a straight line toward the door amplified the feeling that I was going around in circles. This first attempt to get rid of her had taken a whole hour and I was still in the same place I’d started. The sound of gunshots, explosions, and breaking bottles fortified me. I breathed in as deeply as I could. Adelaida Falcón, think. Desperation can beget strokes of genius. I looked up and examined the dark apartment. A sewing-machine table against the balcony presented itself as the most practical option. If men and women were killing themselves in the streets, then how strange could it be for a dead body to fall from a fifth floor? May dead bodies rain down. Just that, no metaphors.

  I maneuvered the piece of furniture until it was pressed against the window that opened onto the railing. It took me another half hour to lift Aurora Peralta from the floor. I boosted her body onto a chair, in this way gaining the momentum needed to shift her onto the table. The flat surface acted like a large platter. I rolled her facedown. Her legs were stiff as tongs. Rigor mortis gave her the appearance of a sad acrobat. I pushed her, straining with all my strength, as if, rather than doing away with a dead body, I were giving birth. “A mother came to believe/that her daughter conceived/and gave birth thanks to a tempest,” my mother used to sing. And that’s what this was: a birth.

  When Aurora Peralta’s waist passed beyond the window frame, the weight of her body made it tip. I watched her stick legs disappear in the air: a bulk robbed of life and dignity. It wasn’t my fault. It’s not your fault, Adelaida, I told to myself, crouching on the balcony floor. The sound of the Sons of the Revolution’s motorbikes drilled in my ears. Their threats and shouts echoed like pellets. “Kill him, kill him! Kill that dog! Film it! Film it, they’re taking him! Kill him!” If I didn’t hear Aurora Peralta smash into the pavement, it was thanks to all that noise.

  I wanted to peer down but instead stayed hidden, slathered in sweat and awash with shame. The stitches María had used to sew up the wound in my head were still hurting. Heat was plastered to my face. I felt a tide of puke rising up my throat, and it was dense, congealed. Things had reached a point of no return; any attempt to remedy past actions would compromise the next step. I hadn’t killed her. But that didn’t mean I hadn’t dined at the same trash-covered table.

  I only wanted a home. Somewhere to lay my head. A place where I could get my bearings and wash the filth from my body. I wished for the water to have its way. I wanted it to cleanse me and dissolve the dirty scar that had formed, like a second skin, over my body. If I wanted that, I had to hurry. I couldn’t leave Aurora Peralta’s body at the building entrance. Anyone might recognize her. Twenty meters from the door, I spotted a burning Dumpster. If I could take her there, no trace of her story would remain. Just another dead person in the city. One more among many. Weren’t quartered bodies always showing up in suitcases and trash heaps? How many corpses that no one would ever recognize or claim dotted the city? People who died. And the story ended there.

  I didn’t know if I should keep the alcohol-soaked shirt on my face. I needed it to counter the tear gas. But if I went downstairs with my face covered, my appearance would mark me as having taken a side. The losing side, of course. Most protesters used shirts in the same fashion so they could endure hour upon hour of pepper spray bombardment. It was the uniform of the punished: a magnet for the roving gunmen. I grabbed the shirt at the last minute and rushed out into the street. At the building entrance, a burst of pepper spray seared my throat.

  Aurora Peralta had hit the asphalt headfirst. I had trouble recognizing her. The stench of burned tires and pepper gas formed a dense cloud, an ideal cover for moving quickly. I dragged her body toward a drum that was burning beside the blaze. It was farther away than I’d calculated. On the way I picked up a bottle filled with gasoline, a homemade bomb that some unfortunate soul hadn’t had the chance to throw. I splashed the fuel over Aurora Peralta. I pulled her by the ankles toward the barricade. Her clothing caught alight as soon as it touched the flames. A San Juan bonfire in April.

  A song that people in Ocumare and Choroní sang every year on June 23, the eve of San Juan, came to mind. I would hear the crude lyrics in the distance as I stood in the doorway of the Falcón guesthouse. “’Til the gunfire sounds, I ain’t moving from he’. Ay, garabí,” the town’s Afro-descendants would sing, hitting their drums, as men and women moved their hips amid the sweat and aguardiente vapors. My aunts Clara and Amelia knew the lyrics by heart and sang them without blinking an eye. On the beach, everyone partook in the revelries, drunk, elbow to elbow, nervous as larvae, heaving a swaying wooden saint to the seashore.

  A few meters from me, Aurora Peralta was being consumed by fire and bullets. People ran from one side to the other, performing their own strange revelries, a fiesta without rhyme or reason comprised of gunpowder, death, and lunacy. In this country we dance, and we purge the dead. We sweat them out, exorcise them like demons, expel them like shit. They’ll only end up in the septic tanks, trash heaps that burn easily, as if we were made of worthless stuff. “Hasta que no suene el plomo, no me voy de aquí. Ay, garabí.” I left Aurora Peralta burning in solitude and ran.

  I was almost at the building entrance when I was bowled over. My cheek struck the ground. I felt my skin scrape against the asphalt. I thought I must have slipped on the oil that gets spread across the pavement to bring down anyone who flees. Then I realized somebody had knocked me down. The weight of his body was pinning my hips, immobilizing me.

  “Keep still, chica! You keep still! What are you doing, hey? Where are you going?”

  I tried to turn around, but the body on top of me wouldn’t let me free myself. Pressed against the ground, I couldn’t see his face or guess at which side he belonged to—whether he was protesting the government or was one of its followers. I started writhing, trying to get him off me.

  “What are you doing, chica?”

  Whoever it was didn’t seem willing to hit me, at least not straight off.

  “What am I doing? I’m defending, fighting like you are.”

  I squirmed until I was faceup.

  “Fighting? You? Against what? Against who?”

  My attacker’s face was obscured behind a Sons of the Revolution mask. His eyes peered at me through a black facial covering in the shape of a skull. The stench of burning flesh was spreading through the air. Pinning me with his legs and holding my arms down, my attacker only wanted to keep me immobilized. I redoubled my strength, flailed, kicked, and stretched my torso until I freed an arm. I swiped at him, squirmed. Finally my fingernails hooked around his mask. I ripped it from his face. He didn’t object, didn’t even struggle. He left me a moment, not moving a muscle. If there’s a God for wrongdoers, He was by my side. I recognized the face immediately. It was Ana’s brother.

  “Santiago! It’s you!”

  He said nothing.

  “Your sister’s driving herself crazy looking for you.”

  “Shhhhhh! Do as I say. Keep hitting me and resisting, okay?” He covered his face with the
mask again and got close to my ear. “Where can I take you to get you away from this?”

  “The apartment block twenty meters behind you.”

  Santiago lifted me off the ground, pushing and shoving, grabbing and waving about a tear-gas grenade that had exploded nearby. A few seconds later, no one could see us. As a Motorized Fleet band crossed the avenue at high speed, emptying their gun barrels against the buildings, we ran toward the building entrance.

  “’Bye,” he said when we reached it.

  Then he turned and started walking away. I dashed over to him and tried to pull him into the building, my arm around his neck. Santiago pushed me away.

  “Go inside. If you’re set on getting shot you can go right ahead, but I’m not getting myself killed. If they find out I didn’t split your head in two, they’ll shoot me.”

  A new burst of gunfire sent us sprawling on the ground.

  “Please, listen to me. Your sister’s looking for you. You have to call her. And if you don’t, I will!”

  “If you do that, they’ll crush us all. Her, me, even you. So—”

  He couldn’t finish his sentence. A boy fell at our feet. He was no older than seventeen. He’d been pushed by the force of a tear-gas bomb that ripped apart his chest. Right behind him, one of the riot police appeared with a rifle in hand. Santiago dealt me a punch to the stomach, grabbed me by my hair, and shook me like a doll.

  “Get this one to the truck. Get going, drag her, you lazy piece of shit, drag her! Take her to the Bolívar command!” the black-clad man ordered Santiago.

  Even though I was doubled over on the ground, winded, my stomach muscles clenched, I saw how he moved away from us to make a beeline for his fallen prey. Squatting, he started searching the boy’s pockets. Robbing the dead, instead of laying them to rest.