Life During Wartime (20 page)

… the filthiest thing, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll do it no matter what, and it won’t be like the basement, the light through cobwebs, it won’t, through cobwebs on the cracked pane, gray like his heart, withered like his heart, and the pain right through me, bright, it had a color and bright, and I’ll do it, I’ll let him do it again, the pain so bright that God will notice, God will forgive, but not in the basement, not in the …

… what basement, what pain …

… is it you …

… what basement, what pain …

… it’s you, it really is, oh God, thank you, yes …

… what basement, what pain …

… the basement, yes, in the homeless shelter, and I was asleep in the basement, warm, it was warm with the furnace, the heat from the furnace, and I woke up and he was on me, almost in me, and not the right place, the place no one should see, and it hurt so much …

… who …

… oneof the old ones, so many old ones, and I couldn’t see his face, just his hands on my shoulders, his yellow hands with one nail bruised, purple and black,
like a claw, hooks in my shoulder forcing me down, my face in the dust, my tongue when I screamed tasting the dust, the ashes, and the furnace roaring, no one could hear me, except I could, I could hear my voice in the flames of the furnace, a voice singing in the flames, even with the pain it was singing, joyful, because there was so much to feel, and I wanted … is it you, really you, really …

… what did you want …

… the dust, to taste the dust again, but I couldn’t he was pulling my hair, pulling back my head, bending me, breaking me, he said he’d kill me if I told, but I didn’t want to tell, didn’t want anyone to know, I wanted the dust in my mouth …

… why …

… to swallow back the pain, like cats when they’re sick they swallow back the sickness, and they’re better, they just don’t let it lie there on the floor, they take it back inside and make it part of themselves, and when he’d gone I did it, I lapped up the dust like a cat laps up sickness until my tongue was gray, and …

… did the pain stop …

… yes, no, yes, for a while, but it’s always there, always coming up again, always thick and gray forever, and I have to keep lapping up more and more, and is it you, really, please, please tell me, is it you …

…

… please oh please …

…

… is it you, I need your voice, I never knew the voice would feel so hot, is it you, tell me …

… yes …

… oh God take it away, please, give me a color bright without pain, please …

… yes.…

… oh, oh, I …

… listen …

… I will, I will …

… picture the man who attacked you …

… I can’t, I …

… he’s old, jaundiced, his gray hair and ragged, his face a map of hollows and sorrows, of wrinkles and evils, his clothes are rags, his heart is rags, his teeth are gone, his gums are the color of blood, and his eyes are blue, watery, weepy, do you see him …

… yes, but …

… watch …

… he’s … dissolving, cracking, cracks are spreading all over him, and his skin, it’s flaking and …

… and what …

… light …

… watch …

… he’s beginning to glow, to glow from inside the cracks, and the light …

… what’s happening with the light …

… it’s … coming into me, shining out in beams, shining into me …

… cleansing, pure …

… yes, and he’s gone now, only light filling me …

… how do you feel …

… I don’t know, different, I feel different …

… stronger …

… yes …

… strong enough to leave, to start over, to begin to live a new way, a new life …

… but where …

… you must leave …

… how …

… leave this place, you must leave now, soon, and find another place, a small town, the country, white houses and farms, and there you will be beautiful, you will open, a flower, your heart full, your body clean and sweet, and you will breathe new air, new thoughts, and love …

… love …

… love will take you, lift you, heal you, and you will forget the basement, the pain, you will forget it now, you will never think of it again, and when there is the beginning of that old pain, not the thought of it, only the beginning, the bad feelings, the fear, you will hear my voice and know that only the joy is real, do you feel the joy …

… yes, yes …

… and never listen to another voice, only his voice is real, is joy … …

I won’t, I promise …

… and your beauty will be a perfume, a thought, a knowledge, a fire, and you will give only to one, to one who sees that beauty, whose touch will treasure you, whose heart will know your heart, and when he comes to you, my voice will confirm him, will feel your knowledge and will say his name …

… love …

… yes, love forever, love for now, and he will take you deep and darling into the heartland, into a color bright and painless …

… love …

… leave now, now, and seek your new home …

… but …

… I will be with you …

… always …

… yes, always, now go …

… I’m afraid …

… into light, go into light, into the promise of joy, go …

The girl backed away, her face perplexed but radiant. ‘I … I’ve got to go.’ She smiled. I’m sorry, I really have to.’

Sexula laughed nastily.

‘Here!’ The girl reached into her shopping bag, took something out, and pressed it into Mingolla’s hand: a plastic base atop which the holographic figure of a bearded man in a white robe walked around and around, his hands clasped in prayer. He thanked her, but she had already started for the door, walking fast, breaking into a run as she pushed out into the street.

Ludy said, ‘Don’t got the twenny get outta the lobby.’

Sexula rubbed against Mingolla, saying, ‘Ain’tcha got some way of provin’ you a vet?’ And he remembered everything now, his memory jogged by the exercise of power. He was lost, lost in America, in sadness and confusion, and when he found who he was looking for, although they had won, they would still be lost, without plan or purpose, without even any understanding of what had been won. Ludy began demanding the twenty, and Sexula told Mingolla that if he couldn’t get it together she was going to leave, because vet or not she wasn’t about to do it in no alley, and Mingolla stared through the glass doors into the country of his birth, into an animated mural of gaud and dissolution that seemed at once foreign and familiar, into painted faces and unseeing eyes, wondering what to do, while the tiny Jesus circled constantly in his hand …

*

… Izaguirre’s office walls faded in, and Mingolla jumped up from the chair, still sick and feeling more lost than ever in the winded silence of the hotel. His thoughts whirled, trying to comprehend what had happened. It had been so real! The future … that’s what it must have been. Yet there had been so much that smacked of hallucination. The way his thoughts had gone, the distortions. And the thing with the girl. Hearing her thoughts, answering them. But the most unbelievable thing had been his treatment of her. He’d recognized his paranoia and confusion. But that calm, compassionate soul, he hadn’t recognized that person at all. No, it had to have been a hallucination. He’d tell Izaguirre about it in the morning, and … On second thought, maybe he’d keep it under his hat. Just in case it had been both a hallucination
and
real.

The sea was glowing streaks of aqua, light purple, and brown over sand, kelp beds, and muddy shallows. Combers bright as toothpaste broke over the coral heads, and beyond them, the water was choppy and dark. Crabs flexed their bone-white claws and scuttled from beneath a jetty into the kelp fringe at the margin of the shore; a crane stepped with Egyptian poise through a reflecting film of water overlying a sand bar. Roosters crowed, call and response, Skinks scurried into the beach vine. A fisherman in shorts and a red hard hat poled a dory past, heading for the channel. Tied to a coco palm, a spotted hog rooted in the mucky sand not far from a compound wall of green cinderblock inset with a wooden gate. And Mingolla sat on a palm stump about fifty feet seaward from the hog, holding a baby hummingbird in his hand. Bottle green with a ruby throat, barely the size of his thumb joint.

Angry voices from farther down the beach, where Izaguirre and Tully were arguing. ’… no reason,’ was all Mingolla could hear.

A live jewel in his palm, the hummingbird throbbed with life, with anxiety, its throat pulsing. Mingolla had searched for its nest, but with no luck. He wished he could do something for the hummingbird; he couldn’t just leave it on the sand.

‘Shit!’ said Tully, waving his hand.

Izaguirre stood with his arms folded.

Mingolla wondered if he could calm the hummingbird down. He touched its mind cautiously, feeling the electrical contact as a tiny fire flickering at the edges of his thought, one that winked off abruptly. The hummingbird’s throat had quit pulsing.

‘All right, mon! You won’t hear no more ’bout it from me!’

Tully came stomping up, dropped onto the sand beside him, and Mingolla closed his fist around the hummingbird. It was warm, its beak stabbing his palm. A shiver passed through him, the ghost of an emotion.

‘Ever stop and t’ink dat dis damn war make no sense,’ said Tully grumpily.

Mingolla reached behind him, scooped a hollow in the sand, and gave the hummingbird a surreptitious burial.

‘I mean here dere’s war’ – Tully swiped at the sand – ‘and here dere’s none.’ He made another swipe next to the first one. ‘And damn fools are sendin’ other damn fools to do t’ings nobody have any business doin’.’

‘What’s the problem?’ Mingolla asked.

‘Dat Cifuentes squint was messin’ wit’ you …’

‘Yeah?’

‘Dey goin’ to send you after her, send you into de Petén to bring her back for interrogation.’ Tully sighed, exasperated. ‘I say to Izaguirre, “Mon, dat’s a waste of dis boy’s talent. He got better t’ings he can be doin’.” But de doctor he say dat’s how it goin’ to be.’

‘That’s fine with me,’ said Mingolla. ‘Just fine.’

Tully looked at him askance. ‘Don’t sound like you care much fah her.’

‘I care a lot,’ said Mingolla in a dead voice, watching grackles swoop out of the high sun like bits of winged matter blown from its core. A vulture landed with a crunch in a palm top.

‘You gettin’ strange, Davy,’ said Tully. ‘Gotta watch that.’

‘You ever hear words when you touch somebody’s mind?’ Mingolla asked.

‘Words? Not’in’ like dat … but I do hear ’bout one fella say he got words one time, just a little bit. Why you axin’?’

‘I had a dream ’bout it.’

‘What kinda dream?’ Tully was more than a little interested.

Mingolla shrugged, thought back to his hallucination, wondering if his communication with the Christian girl had been evidence of something or just a fantasy. ‘Weren’t you going to brief me on the Iron Barrio?’

Another sigh, and Tully pulled some papers from his hip pocket. ‘Yeah, all right. Dese here de plans, but ’fore you scan dem we better talk ’bout gettin’ in. Ain’t no big trick to that. De whores dat live dere …’

‘Whores?’

‘Oh, yeah. Lotsa people in de Barrio dey got family on de outside dat’s hostage, and to earn some extra money, de prison guards dey send some of de women out to work the street. Dey know de women ain’t goin’ to be ’scapin’ long as dere family have to pay de cost.’

Voices behind them.

A squat black man and a small boy were walking from the compound gate; the man was carrying a machete and a pistol.

‘Look like Spurgeon ’bout to slaughter he hog,’ said Tully. ‘Anyway, dere dis one whore … Alvina Guzman. De other prisoners treat her special ’cause her father Hermeto Guzman, de one who led de Army of de Poor up in Guatemala. Dey bot’ heroes to people in de Barrio. So you hook up wit’ her, and t’ings should go smooth.’

The hog watched the man’s approach, grunting softly as if expecting a treat. The man stopped half-a-dozen feet away and broke down the pistol.

‘You won’t have no trouble trackin’ her. Most nights she be in one of de bars on La Avenida de la Republica.’

Mingolla touched the hog’s mind, found it strong, and hovered at its edges.

‘We goin’ to give you some drugs for to barter, for to …’

‘Why? I can just take over whoever I need.’