Luz: book i: comings and goings (Troubled Times 1) (32 page)

I dreamt of underwater caves and strange pinnacle formations that jabbed and stung me as I looked for Rigo along the ocean floor. I dreamt of tiny pins of light that lured me forward and beckoned me to slip through its luminous cracks, but only to sear my eyes and cast me permanently into a Cimmerian blindness. I even dreamt of Rigo falling to the
depths of the sea and rising again, but only dead. In all these dreams how I wept for him, how I cried with worry as to whether or not his journey had ended safely. But the answer was forever kept from me. Each time he answered back and tried comforting me, tried consoling me, nothing would give me solace. Nothing.

So I alternated between sobbing and sleeping. For hours on end I sobbed. For hours on end I slept. I knew not if I sobbed in the middle of the night or if I slept in the middle of the day. The hours brought a timeless maze of agony and misery, a mangled morass of clouded emotion. Good thing I didn’t work. What type of job could I possibly hold? What capacity could I function in? Instead, hours went by before I’d get up. But I didn’t want to get up. Not with Rigo’s smell embedded in the sheets. Not with his scent still surrounding me. This only made things worse: feeling him next to me and sensing his physical presence. But that was all I wanted: to feel him, to hold him, to envelop him completely.

“Rigo,” I called out over and over again. “Rigo,” I cried inwardly.

What would I tell people? What would I tell Mamá and my sisters when I finally faced them? I didn’t know. I couldn’t bring myself to talk about any part of this ordeal—just as I couldn’t stand to look at myself. At one point I jolted up from bed and caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. How horrible I looked, awful. My face red and blotched from crying, my eyes swollen and half-dead. I relived the events of the last twenty-four hours like a recurring nightmare, a dream that would resurrect itself even though I wanted the images dead and buried. Why had this happened? Why? Less than twenty-four hours ago I had pleaded with my husband to leave Cuba. I had begged him to join me. Now, less than a day later, he was the one gone and I was stuck behind.

Why?
I repeatedly asked myself.
Why?
I drilled myself over and over again. But I knew why. The answer resonated clearly. As crazy as it sounded, I believed in the visitation. Or I wanted to believe in it, even if the Angel Gabriel hadn’t answered any of the
whys: Why
I couldn’t leave?
Why
this
child must be raised in Cuba?
Why
this was all happening? I didn’t get this part, but I would now seek out the answers. I would now hunt them all down.

This was the precise moment I felt hopeful again, when I decided to embark upon this quest. Maybe I was snapping out of it. Maybe I’d had enough, saturated with thoughts and images of all things Rigo. But I felt some force guiding me. I felt it beside me and I felt it inside, an impulse of energy, a jolt of power. For so many hours the strands of time had tightened and twisted me up in a knot of torment. But now I felt my spirit freeing itself, rising up as I sought out the
why
.
Trust me
, the angel had warned.
You don’t want to know why. Stay out of that part of things. Matters will run much more smoothly
.

Hardly a consolation. It only motivated me to want to unearth things all the more. And so, without knowing the time of day or whether afternoon had melded into evening or evening had merged into night, I set out on a mission in the solitude of my room. A journey I would not turn my back on. This morning I’d forgone a trek across the water to a land of the future. Now I would embark upon a journey into the wavelengths of the past, a passage across time and space into world I knew not. Some regarded this world as archaic and obsolete; others viewed it as vibrant and alive. To me it was a fervent strand of hope in the endless stretch of hours. But despite this newfound resolve, it seemed fate wished otherwise. Just as I was about to launch upon this exciting new journey, everything went black.

Apagón time, our nightly blackout. It had to be eight o'clock or so. An unnerving blackness pressed down upon the room so that I couldn’t see my own hands in front of me. I took this as a sign, a warning to stay put and call off my quest. But I would not let a power failure stop me. Nothing would. I was tired of letting doubt rule my heart, tired of allowing fear to cloud my judgment.

I rose eagerly from my bed and took some hasty steps. A pitch blackness had descended upon me, but I needed no compass, nor did I stumble. I was engulfed in total darkness,
but I could see more clearly than ever. I sensed everything perfectly fine. Just as the blind navigate an unseen world with deftness and agility, so did I head to my dresser with equal acuity and to where all my answers lay.

I felt around for a box of matches and found it easily, right next to a small vase made of white porcelain. I kept three votives on top of the dresser and lit the candles one by one. Their glow swelled up the room and I glanced in the mirror again. How horrible I still looked. What a drawn and deathly specter I made, frighteningly thin and frail, fraught with stain and shadow. Not to mention my eyes red from crying and my face blotched and blemished. I did not recoil from this image; it only strengthened my resolve. Nothing would stop me from retrieving my answers. Not even my own deathly reflection.

Given all the turmoil and chaos of the last couple days, I should have been spent. I should have collapsed from exhaustion. Yet all the contrary. The yearning to find answers rendered me awake and alive. Not mildly alive, but dangerously alive. For the first time since the unfolding of this fiasco, I finally felt some solace.

There it was. On my dresser. Next to the candles. The passport to my journey. Not only the passport, but the visa and ticket all in one. I rested both hands on it reverently. The book that would supply me with all my answers. The Holy Book, as it was known.
La Santa Biblia
. The Angel Gabriel might never visit me again, so I would visit him. Sadly, my prayer cards were missing from this threadbare shrine, but I decided to do without them. I presumed they were still with my belongings, but I would not leave my room to retrieve them.

Tonight was like any other night when it came to the usual antics accompanying an apagón: the rowdiness, the restlessness, all of it loud and boisterous. The streets swelled with life during our nightly blackouts. Voices grew louder. Pots and pans turned into conga drums. Even the neighborhood street dogs grew more animated: snarling and growling louder than ever, yelping and barking more
vigorously as they fought one another and ran back and forth in packs. It was no longer a sphere between sound and silence we inhabited, but between noise and nuisance. But you couldn’t blame them. They were only trying to comfort themselves, only trying to find solace, both Canine and Cuban. It was their way of affirming that life still existed in that Cimmerian darkness. But I needed no such connection. I had something wondrous to look forward to and rejoiced at the prospect. I kept myself entombed against all the clamor and commotion. I sealed off these distractions from the present as I prepared to venture into the past.

As already stated, I had never been religious. Not the least bit. Yet anyone seeing me right now would have figured otherwise. I had always loved to read, and like all Cubans, decried the lack of reading material available here. Our cultural censors deprived us of anything engaging or entertaining unless it had to do with the exploits of Fidel or Che, which were neither. So why had I ever wanted to be a critic? What was there to critique here? Sure, there was plenty to
criticize
, but not critique. Admittedly, the Bible had never appealed to me as an alternative. It was simply too long a book, too daunting a text. But this was no longer the case. No longer did the sheer size of the book intimidate me.

Those three votives swayed with a tantalizing but strong glow, their flames fluid but fierce. I picked one up from the dresser and brought it to my nightstand; in my other hand I carried that Santa Biblia. I don’t think I had ever opened a Bible, much less read one. But I would read it now, eagerly so, expectantly, all by the light of this one devout candle. And not merely read the book, but devour it. For I did not merely embark upon a journey, but leapt upon one.

The Old Testament. I didn’t start there. No need to go back that far in time. I needed my answers
now
and went straight to where they lay: the New Testament, the gospels in particular. The Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel of Mark. The Gospels of Luke and John. How surprisingly easy they were to read, how inviting and enticing the text, starting with the first of them, Matthew.

It amazed me how, already, given my very recent visitation, I had such insight into what I read, especially the account of the Angel Gabriel appearing to Mary. I couldn’t help but smile wistfully. How different her visitation had been from mine. Gabriel was right. Mary had not acted the least bit impertinent as I had. She never doubted his word, and instead, accepted her fate obediently. She truly was blessed among women and I would never come anywhere near her.
But why?
Why was this happening? And why had I been chosen for this task?

I would find out. I kept reading. I kept studying. I analyzed any nuance in the text that might illuminate my circumstance. I lost all track of time and had no idea whether minutes had crawled by or hours had marched on. I knew not whether Mamá and my sisters had retired to their rooms or if they had left the house.

I did note that, after a while, everything acquired a palpable stillness: my room, the house, the air I breathed. Even the flames from those votives burned in a fixed and frozen stillness. Surely now, given all the events of the last twenty-four hours, I expected to conk out. But I didn’t. I read long into the hours. I read vigorously, voraciously, submerged in the glow of that frozen candlelight, wandering deeply into a biblical landscape as if, finally, I too had pushed off from the shores of Cojimar, a parallel Cojimar. Finally, I too had become a balsera. Really I had: a biblical balsera. I too had acquired an inner tube on which to float upon. That is all this book was. Not an inner tube that floated along the face of the world’s seas and oceans, but an inner tube that took you traveling deep inside yourself, in search of some inner truth and peace. Not an inner tube that would ever puncture or toss you about or you could slip and sink through, but one that offered constant companionship, a hand that would not let go. Amazing. All of it. Even if I never attained the answers I set out to find, what an education I received. How much I learned and soaked up as I floated inwardly upon that inner tube and wove through the strands of one gospel to the next.

Jesus Christ. Jesus of Nazareth. I had never really
understood him, never known the intricate details of his life. But how I learned those details now. How astonishing a man he truly was. There were so many sides to his personality. So many facets to his life. There were his teachings and ministry. His miracles and healings. There were the parables and prophecies and all his travels across the ancient world. There was the Jesus in the text whom the whole world thought it knew, and the stereotypical images of him as well. But it was the Jesus underneath the text I began to discover, a Jesus I never would have encountered had I not climbed aboard and clung to this inner tube.

Glimpses into his personality. Insights into the shifting shades of his character. A peek into his temperament. Even his likes and dislikes. Such as his obvious love of water and a profound affinity to it. How many times had Jesus ministered seaside or healed by the water? How many times had Jesus even addressed the multitudes from a ship on the water? How many times did Jesus command a tumultuous sky and sea? Many. Numerous. Even his most famous miracle involved water and assuming control of it—walking on the water. Something nobody had ever done or would ever do again. Jesus not only conquered the waters, he derived comfort from it, solace.

An inner glance. A deep illumination. I felt I possessed that now. Like a true understanding of his compassion, a compassion so profound it made him seem more vulnerable than his human brethren. If everyone expected the Son of God to show nothing less than compassion, his was far more than average. It sprang forth from some metaphysical inner source, some inner well that enabled him to understand human frailty in a way others could not; that allowed him to embrace weakness and forgive mistakes where others never would; and that easily allowed him to overlook flaws and failings where others refused. How many times had Jesus healed people or made them whole again simply because he took pity on them? Simply because he was moved to compassion by their faith?

There was the teacher in him too. How Jesus loved to
teach. He felt it his very calling to educate. How many times did he illustrate the mysteries of life and Heaven by the use of parables? Those rich and living analogies used to make comparisons between the earthly and the sublime. There was the healer in Jesus too. How many times did he cause the blind to see or enable the lame to walk only because they touched his garment and he felt their faith? Felt their belief. Whether he spit into clay and rubbed his hands into a stagnant pair of eyes, or someone in need simply asked and truly believed, his healing freed them of their chains. The abundance of his miracles ran the full gamut. Whether he was feeding the five thousand or feeding the seven thousand or turning water into wine or even raising the dead, Jesus managed it all. Not only was he the ultimate showstopper, but a one-man show.

On and on the miracles went. On and on his teachings went. On and on my travels progressed so that I lacked all sense of time. Still I kept reading. Still I kept searching. What did this have to do with me? Why was I being selected to have God’s next child? What in here indicated that God would be having another child, much less one born in Cuba? Nothing so far, nothing. So I kept reading and traveling and scouring through the scripture with a tireless and abundant energy. I was not the least bit fatigued. Not with the education I was getting. Not with the insight I was gaining. I couldn’t put that Bible down. I couldn’t release my grip from that inner tube—how it coasted and guided me along. And how ashamed I suddenly felt, embarrassed even, recalling what I had told the Angel Gabriel about never really believing in the…well…I couldn’t finish my thought. But I believed now. Truly I did. And for the first time since Rigo’s abandonment of me, I was finding peace and comfort. I knew this because a long stretch of time elapsed when I thought nothing of him. Rigo did not enter my mind or cross my thoughts as that inner critic in me swelled and sprang to life.