Waking the Dead (37 page)

It seemed just a matter of time before Francisco and Gisela’s visas would be revoked. There was law prohibiting the entrance of Communists to our shores, and though the Higginses claimed to be non-Communist, it was really a matter of semantics. They were manifestly a part of that worldwide keenness for change and retribution against which our country stood poised. They made the rounds, addressing university groups, church organizations, visiting with Chilean refugees who had managed to get into America and also with those who were here in secret.They played cat and mouse with the FBI, who followed them practically everywhere.

Francisco and Gisela were already at Resurrection House when Sarah and I arrived. Father Mileski was taking them on a detailed tour of the facilities, which Mileski called “our physical plant.” The Higginses were dressed as if for a night listening to Duke Ellington at a smart supper club, and from the looks on their faces I guessed they were ready to leap out of their skins from the boredom of it all. Mileski was pointing out the little handmade tables, the smeary do-it-yourself glazing on the thin, icy windows, and delineating which pink blankets were donated and which we picked up cheap at warehouse sales. “It’s all spit, paste, and tape, putting a place like this together,” Mileski was saying, and the Higginses nodded vigorously at whatever he said, as if a certain vehemence of agreement could end the story.

Finally, Gisela broke from the tour by engaging a neighborhood woman in Spanish conversation. Bernardo Gutierrez appeared. He was with a new woman now that Madeline Conners was off grinding lenses in Maryland. His companion was named Kirsten; she was heavyset, in her twenties, with a Nordic braid down her back. Bernardo embraced Francisco passionately, but there was something reserved, tentative, even suspicious in Francisco’s response. Then Bernardo rushed toward Gisela to grab her hand and bring it to his lips. He sobbed, “Oh comrade, comrade, what they have done to us.” Over his bowed head, Francisco and Gisela traded worried glances but Francisco shrugged and then nodded and Gisela put her hand on top of Bernardo’s head, giving him solace.

I helped Sarah set a long table; there would be ten of us for dinner. A Mexican woman named Maria was working the kitchen. The kitchen was filled with smoke, but Maria looked contemplative, patting the tortillas and humming to herself. Upstairs were the three Chileans whom Sarah and Mileski had spirited out of Santiago—Pablo Estevez Martinez, who had published a small left-wing newspaper called
La Barricada
before and during the Allende presidency, and his sister and her son.
La Barricada
had had a circulation under a thousand and Estevez Martinez was its sole contributor. In other words, it was nothing more than a personal broadsheet for his own opinions and reactions—a movie review here, a poem there, a scathing piece attacking agricultural inefficiency. Yet after the generals’ coup,
La Barricada
was banned and its publisher went into a self-imposed internal exile, hiding out in the countryside and then finally taking refuge in the home of his sister Seny. Pablo was ecstatic, manic really, now that he was out of Chile. He kept a bulging notebook for his jottings in his dark gray sports jacket and at night he dashed off essays on everything from American TV to American weather to the rhythm of the American walk.

His sister and nephew, however, were in terrible shape. Resurrection House was dusty, chaotic, the strangers were numerous and opaque: even those who spoke Spanish spoke it in the Mexican way, and the difference made home seem further away than ever. The neighborhood was scary. Seny and Gustavo, her son, could barely sleep— waiting, if not for the Immigration agents then for Chilean thugs, and if not for them then for some neighborhood lunatic to come in through the skylight with steel tips on his lace-up boots, broken glass in his hair. Even when they slept they seemed haunted by the cold steel dreams of the Northern Hemisphere, whose unfamiliar constellations lurked behind the ominous gauze of industrial smog.

When the Chileans came down to dinner, they were withdrawn and respectful around the Higginses. Even effusive, argumentative Pablo seemed sheepish: old class distinctions clicked in and he took his place. They seemed to trust Sarah. Somehow her involvement in their situation made them confident. She seemed to them what she had always seemed to me—a lucky person, not walking the fault line like Francisco and Gisela, nor complacent with a false sense of security like the priests. She was lovely and quick and altogether American, and they stayed near her as if her bones and background were a safer sanctuary than any church could provide. Sarah set the hot dogs down on a cracked oval platter; Maria brought the tortillas and meat in a pot covered by a damp dish towel. Sarah sat next to me and took my hand beneath the table. I was about to respond by pressing my leg against hers until I happened to notice that everyone else was holding hands, too.

“Thank you for this day and for this meal, O Heavenly Father,” said Mileski. “Thank you for opening our hearts to the cause of freedom and may we use the calories you put before us to do your work.”

“Amen,” said Gisela abruptly, even a little sharply. Mileski’s eyes clicked in her direction. He made a small, tight smile that was all but hidden by his beard; the whiskers around his mouth shifted like grass will when something unseen suddenly slithers through.

“Amen,” said Mileski. He reached across the table for the pot of tortillas; Maria had twisted paper napkins onto the pot handles so they could be touched.

“Has your Church spoken to you about your activities?” Francisco asked Mileski. The platter of hot dogs was passed his way and he accepted them with a surprised smile, as if he was just that moment noticing them.

“I hear the rumbles,” said Mileski.

“I’m surprised they allow you to continue your activities,” Francisco said.

“Right now,” said Mileski, “it’s easier for them to pretend none of this is happening. I’m floundering and they know it. If I ever get it right, then the ax will fall.”

“I wonder, Steven,” said Father Stanton. He sounded as if he was trying to recreate an argument they’d already had for the benefit of us who had missed it. “The church is in transition. Not only here but worldwide. She desperately wants to find her way through troubled times.”

“In Chile,” said Gisela, “they dance cheek to cheek with the murderers.”

“A
terrible thing
,” said Bernardo. There was something in how he said it—the speed of the response, the slightly inappropriate gusto of the reply—that made something shift in me. I looked over toward Bernardo and he avoided my eyes.

“The Church cannot exist,” said Mileski, through a mouthful of food, “unless it can position itself as an alternative to life. Now the elders of the Church may love the capitalist state—but the Church’s first love is itself. And if people are going to rise against their leaders, the Church does not want to be caught on the wrong side of the conflict. After all, all those poor people—those are our
customers
.”

“Very cynical, Steven,” said Stanton. “Very cynical indeed.” He glanced at the rest of us, with an eager expression, as if he wanted us to pay attention to his favorite part in a piece of music.

“Well, I don’t want to be cynical. Though I can’t deny that in my own mumbly-bumbly way, I am serving the interests of the Church, even as I challenge her.”

“That is precisely because,” said Stanton, wagging his finger at Mileski, “the concept of Jesus Christ is inherently revolutionary.”

“Do you really think so?” asked Gisela, raising an imperious eyebrow.

“Oh yes, really,” said Sarah. “And Steven does, too. We all do.” Her face flushed; she had that look of absolute vulnerability laced with a love of adventure she had the night she opened her apartment window and invited me in, that first night—it seemed to have happened fifty years ago. She held the edge of the table but still swayed back and forth as she spoke. “You could interpret the Scriptures as the most revolutionary document ever written,” she said.

“You
could
interpret it in a hundred different ways,” said Gisela very coolly. “And I dare say people have.”

“Now, Gisela,” said Francisco, with a wink that made it clear he was in complete agreement with her.

“And what about you?” Gisela asked, turning suddenly toward me. “Another good Catholic?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all.”

“Well,” said Gisela, as if this were an enormous relief.

“
Momentito
, darling,” said Francisco. “If it wasn’t for some brave churchmen, we would not be here and our friends Pablo, Gustavo, and Seny would be in prison, or dead. Or worse.”

“Not to mention me,” said Bernardo.

“Yes,” said Francisco, very dryly. “Not to mention you.”

“Yes, of course. I know that,” Gisela said, dismissively. She turned her attentions back to me. Her eyes were peacock blue; her hair was black and lacquered, swept back, impermeable. I felt very young in her gaze, as if her intelligence cast a light on all that was unformed within me. “Have you been to Chile?” she asked me.

“No. But my partner has.” I pointed to Sarah.

Gisela smiled in a slightly patronizing way. She picked up her glass of beer and tapped her ring against it before bringing it to her lips.

“These hot dogs are
fantástico
,” said Francisco. “You never could find something like this in a socialist country!”

“So what
do
you do?” Gisela asked me, lifting her chin.

“I go to law school.”

“Ah. A student.”

“Fielding has his mind made up to go into politics,” Mileski said.

“When you put it like that,” said Sarah, “it sounds a little odd.” She furrowed her dark eyebrows; there was no feeling on earth quite like being protected by Sarah. You felt immense, immortal. She spoke to Gisela. “Fielding is going to be a senator. And you can take it on my good authority that he will certainly be that.”

“Well, of course,” said Gisela, “you are his … ah, his ah … his
girlfriend
. You are of course a great authority.” Her smile looked suddenly girlish; her laugh was high; it was almost as if she wasn’t being malicious at all. “So now,” she said to me, “you are a member of the student class. And then you will be a lawyer. And then on to the great United States Senate.”

“Yes,” I said. “Exactly. One two three.”

“With so many of your politicians showing their corruption to the world,” Gisela was saying, “I am surprised to see someone from the youth who chooses to follow their example.”

“No sale,” I said, smiling. “Do you really expect me to say I want to go into politics because I want to be some corrupt sonofabitch selling electrodes to the Paraguayan police and arresting peace demonstrators in front of the White House?”

“Vanity, what vanity,” Gisela said.

“I think what my wife is saying—” said Francisco.

“You’re not my interpreter,” said Gisela.

“Please, darling, permit me. What Gisela means is when you enter a corrupt institution, you become a part of it. The system is larger than the people who go into it. It makes its own use of them. That is a historical inevitability.”

“Then what you say is leave politics to the worst of America,” I said.

“Everything is politics,” said Gisela. “Calling your elections and your motorcades politics is part of the sickness of this country.”

“Give me some credit, please,” I said. “I’m saying we have some fairly worthy institutions and some pretty unworthy people running them. If we leave it to the most greedy and dishonorable people to run things, then we’re doing exactly what they would like us to do.”

“I never thought I would live to see Fielding sweat,” Mileski said from the head of the table, reaching for the pot of tortillas.

“I’m not sweating,” I said. “I’m only trying to figure out a way of responding to all of this fucked-up half-thinking without being totally rude.”

“Fielding,” said Sarah.

“No, no, no, that’s all right,” said Mileski. “This is church property but it’s not a church. Let him go.”

“He has no right to speak to
Compañera
Higgins in such a manner,” said Bernardo.

Gisela gestured to him, as if making a signal to a dog she wanted to return to his little mat near the door. She said to me, “Please don’t worry about your manners. After living beneath the heel of United States imperialism, I am not very sensitive to things like manners.”

“Of course you are,” said Francisco. “And you always will be. You will always be elegant, and always correct.”

“Oh, please stop trying to make everything better and pleasant, Paco,” said Gisela. “I am exhausted by your spirits. The politicians of this country sat on their hands with tape over their mouths while Nixon and the CIA and American big business waged a secret war in Chile. And here we have a young man who is obviously aware of all this and yet he chooses to become a part of the very system—the
very system
, you understand?—the very system that put my husband in prison and broke his legs and forced me to live like a convict in my own home. I find it very curious and pardon me but I must investigate.”

“So I’m Exhibit A,” I said.

“An American legal term,” said Gisela. “Why did we come to live in this slaughterhouse, Paco?” she said to her husband, touching her brow like a diva.

“Yes,” I said, before he could answer. “Why did you? I’m sure the Algerians would have been more man happy to have you. Or winter in Sofia. Why not? I guess you came here for the hot dogs.”

“We celebrate what is best about your country, sir,” said Francisco.

And then I made what turned out to be a disastrous choice— though to call it a choice at all is to imply I actually thought about it, when in fact it was more of an instinct, or even a there physical whim. I turned slightly in my seat to make contact with Sarah. I wanted to feel the strength of her frequency but as I looked toward her she bowed her head slightly and looked down at her plate. It was only a slight movement but I felt it as a betrayal, or a prelude to betrayal, with all of the terrifying melodies of the onrushing abandonment compressed and foreshadowed. I realized that in the unpleasant banter between Gisela and me, Sarah’s heart had gone out to Gisela and it was redefining our relationship as any other infidelity would have.