The Labyrinth of Souls

by Nelson Lowhim

  “You been keeping up your studies?” asks the old man.

  “Yes,” she says, looking away from me to Khalid.

  Khalid has finished his food and placed his plate on the edge.

  “Am I going to have to do their dishes too?” asks the girl.

  Vargas lets out a sigh. I can sense the tension and how he doesn’t want any trouble with her, but seems to have been forced into this position.

  “Do your homework first,” he says. “I don’t want another bad grade.”

  The girl puts her plate down on the table, rolling her eyes again. Her movements are still awkward.

  “We can do the plates,” I say. “It’s not a problem.”

  “No,” says Vargas. The old man nods.

  “Well, I want something to do,” I say.

  Vargas doesn’t answer. He picks up the plate of plantains and hands them out with a fork. The girl shakes her head, but he places it on her plate anyways.

  “It’s good for you,” says the old man, shoveling a whole plantain into his mouth.

  The girl is sullenly eating her fried plantains. When she looks up, it’s a deadly eye with which she stares at me.

  I have a feeling that she knows us, and doesn’t approve. But will she nark us out?

  Without a word she gets up and walks out.

  “She needs to learn,” says the old man.

  “She will, she will,” says Vargas. “She’s figuring things out.”

  “Like you?” the old man says and scoffs. His eyes fall on me, as Vargas pushes the plate in front of him. The room crackles with tension. The old man seems smug. I can see that he’s used to having his way with the family members, and that whatever immobilized him, he took it very hard and decided to lean on his family even harder than before.

  “I never got your name,” I say to the old man, hoping to break the tension.

  “I know,” says the old man. He turns to Vargas. “What are they doing in our house?”

  Vargas lets out a sigh. “They’re here because they’re being chased. Wrongfully.”

  “Oh? That’s your reason? This man kills innocents and you decide that he’s innocent, based on what? So you’re willing to risk everything that I, that we have worked for, to give him food? Do you know what they’ll do to your brown ass once they find this man here. Eating our food? They’ll fucking kill you. Turn us out into the street. What then? I’ll have to beg and she,” he says and pauses to jab his hand at the stairs, as some spittle flies out of his mouth. “What the hell do you think she can do?”

  “Enough,” Vargas says in a soft voice.

  My head’s tight from the tension. And though I hate the old man for being what he is, for saying what he’s saying. He has a point. “We’ll leave then,” I say and shift my weight forward, making to get up.

  “No,” Vargas says, though I can barely hear him.

  The old man raises a hand. “I didn’t mean to say just that. Sit.”

  I lean back, though now I want to leave and hopefully see the rubble.

  “I’m old,” says the old man. “Angry. Maybe. But I say things a lot of the time and don’t really mean it.” He strokes his chin while closing his eyes. “Was once a man of great restraint.” His voice seems like it’s on the verge of cracking. “When you’re old it gets to be that death is around the corner, so you spit out whatever’s in your brain. You don’t think so well, and you only remember small, like soundbites.” He shakes his head. Vargas is looking up at him now. I really want to know what the story is behind this family. They seem to be, by the size of this house, at least on the verge of middle class. Middle class memes don’t necessarily lead themselves to helping out criminals. In fact, they never do.

  “And my family,” the old man continues, nodding at Vargas. “What’s left of it, at least. They’re bearing the brunt of my ways. I know it. But what can I do? At this age it’s all fate, so you understand how much of a vessel you are, versus how much of a individual you aren’t.”

  I like the old man already.

  Vargas places his hand on the old man’s.

  The old man huffs. “I’m Luis,” he says, lifting up his hand. I get up and reach across the table and take his surprisingly smooth and bony hand.

  “George,” I say.

  “Khalid.”

  “And I’m Fernando,” says Vargas. “I didn’t want to give you my real name before.” He gives a sheepish grin.

  Fernando, or Vargas fall silent when the girl’s feet pound down the stairs.

  “What?” Fernando asks.

  “This is my house too,” she says and leans over the table.

  “You want to do the dishes now?”

  “Why not?” she says.

  “We’re talking,” Fernando says.

  “Oh?”

  “I thought you had homework,” says Fernando.

  I suppress a smirk.

  There’s something of the devil in her eye. She now stops handling the plates, puts them down carefully, and sits down on the plastic chair.

  Fernando looks up to the ceiling.

  “What?” she asks. “It concerns me too, you know?”

  “No,” snaps Fernando. He now stares at the fish heads on the plate. This time Luis places his hand on Fernando’s.

  “That’s fine,” says Luis. “You want to stay, you can. It does concern you. But remember you don’t tell anyone.”

  “Am I stupid?”

  Fernando clenches his jaw a few times before giving a series of slight nods. “Okay,” he says.

  “Thanks, dad,” says the girl, as she rolls her eyes again. This time she looks at me and smiles.

  “Dalcia,” says Fernando almost growling now.

  “Okay, okay,” she says, but her eyes, incisively intelligent parse me like I’m a fool.

  I squirm. Dalcia clears her throat. I shift my leg. The vents, one near my head, starts to spew out what seems like room-temperature air. It smells dusty.

  “Come on,” she says. “I’ve seen this guy before,” she says and points at me. “And you look like a terrorist, don’t you?” She jabs her finger at Khalid who seems surprised to be part of this conversation.

  “I?” Khalid says.

  “He’s only tagging along,” Fernando says. “He had nothing to do with the bombing.”

  “Well...” I start to say, then think better of it. “There’s no reason to go accusing anyone.”

  “Oh, right,” says Fernando.

  “What?” Dalcia says, raising her voice to a high pitch squeak. “I saw you on the TV. Your ex-wife even said you were guilty.”

  “So the news, it’s true?” I say.

  “Come,” says Luis. “You should go to the cops... Or the news. Tell your story.”

  He gives me a fatherly look. I clench my jaw. Is this what they believe? The nods of the other two, along with their sincere eyes lead me to believe that yes, they do. I glance over to Khalid, hoping for a modicum of support, but he seems to be nodding too. He raises his eyebrows at me, like he’s saying the gig is up.

  “What? You too?” I say. “What about what you’ve done. Surely you’re not saying that after all you’ve been through you believe what they say on television?”

  Khalid shrugs, there are murmurs of disapproval in the others’ eyes—at me.

  “Listen, my friend,” says Khalid. “There isn’t much you can deny. You were in there for a reason.”

  “That’s right,” says Luis. “You were in there. You were caught. Then the bomb goes off and you escape.”

  I raise my hand to Luis to gain some silence. “Khalid, I’m speaking to you now. How can you say that. You were in there. The things they did to you.”

  “The things they did were not right, but I was there for a reason, and it was true.”

  I shake my head slowly, then catch my self, and unable to think of any other way to react, I tsk. “So all the times you saw things on the news about your country, all these times were true?”

  Kha
lid shrugs. I have a feeling that I should bring him down to size, that perhaps it will help to show the others that he was the reason for that bomb. A sharp sense of fear, like I’m about to fall, lurches my heart into my guts. There is no proof that I did it, but right now it’s my word against Khalid’s.

  “Well?” Luis says.

  Dalcia is giving me the perfect impatient-teen look. I’m growing warm with anger. I wonder if I can take them all. But they gave us food, took us in. They didn’t have to do that.

  “You getting angry?” Luis asks, then looks over at his family like he should have known.

  “No,” I say, though the low drop in my voice gives me away. “I’m just thinking.”

  “There’s a half million dollar prize out right now for your head.” Luis pauses and shifts in his seat. He seems in distress. A bead of sweat forms on his forehead. He wrinkles his face and a whole school of creases form and the bead of sweat disappears, though his forehead is somewhat shiny, and he’s breathing hard now. I almost feel sorry for him.

  “What did they say?” I ask.

  Luis shifts in his chair. He doesn’t seem to be listening.

  “I bet they didn’t say—”

  “Shut up,” Dalcia says. She’s looking at her grandfather.

  I realize that both of them are staring at the old man. Fernando gets up at the same time Dalcia does.

  “You okay?” he asks as he moves over to Luis.

  Luis grunts, holding out his hand. Dalcia takes it. “The bathroom?” she asks.

  He winces his face and nods. Slowly, Fernando and Dalcia try to lift him up. I move to help them. Luis lets out a cry of pain.

  “Don’t move me,” he says.

  Khalid comes over too. We pick up the chair and Dalcia opens a door that stands behind us, and that I hadn’t noticed. We carry Luis, on the chair, over to the bathroom. I can smell shit and some sort of medicine. Luis still has his eyes closed, and Fernando and Dalcia have that dead quiet concentration of those losing something precious. We take him to the toilet, and Fernando helps Luis take off his pants. He’s lying there, with his eye closed, letting out little gasps of air. I can smell the mix of the food we ate, as well as something foul, coming out of his mouth. But when the pants come off, the smell of shit fills the room. I can see Dalcia gag, and not wanting to think about it I decided to breathe through my mouth because the smell is strong enough that I’ll gag too. The pants are thrown into a corner. Dalcia disappears and comes back with a garbage bag, throwing the pants in.

  Us three men pick up Luis and guide him to the toilet. I notice something dangling from his ass. It seems too flexible to be shit. But I don’t pay attention, except to hold Luis by his armpits and arm. I stay away from his legs, smeared in shit. His skin and flesh is loose—like holding onto silk. I remember my grandmother, and the times we had to carry her in her last days as her body gave way. She too, when you held her, had that silky feeling. Sure it’s not the tightness of youth, but it feels comfortable. When we place Luis on the toilet, I instinctively reach for my armpit and touch some of the folds growing looser and silkier with age.

  The sound of shit hits the water. I stare at Luis’ flaccid cock, brown and quite large between his legs. I’m not sure why, but it seems like it would have an interesting story. Then I’m thinking about my cock, and my relationship with it; how, as a child, I would always pull it out. How when I was six I would think that it was such an odd thing, and pull it. And when I saw other young girls naked and saw the slit they had, I always wondered what that meant as well. Why was it different. There was nothing to guide my thoughts but childish curiosity back then. I would pull at my flaccid penis and simply wonder. And the testicles beneath always seemed to be something like eggs and they were mine for me. It was odd to think it a reason to be ashamed. I could slide down poles and enjoy the good feeling, but that was it. Or jump from a high place to feel it as well. But as a teen it indeed became something different, something more important or perhaps separate. An odd thing that I wanted no one else to see. Then the white goo. Then how it felt good to get the white cum to come out. Then the measuring, the idea of manhood, of being more of a human for that. Then it was not for me, but for another. My first woman.

  Khalid snaps a finger, and I’m jolted out of my train of thought. I grab the baby wipes I see him pointing at and hand them over.

  When Luis is finished he lets out a sigh of air.

  “Can I have some privacy?” he says. He opens his eyes and looks at his cock. “It’s had its day. But it no longer stirs for anyone.”

  Fernando nods at us, and we walk out.

  “You should wash your hands,” Fernando says, closing the door behind me. He gives Dalcia a look and she beckons me up the stairs with her head.

  Khalid and I follow her up the stairs and to the kitchen. I keep my eyes off her, though I sense that she keeps glancing at me. I wonder if she’s matured early by being able to see first hand the deterioration of her grandfather. I’m glad that I’m no longer the focal point of Luis’ stare and questioning, but I can’t help but feel sorry for him. Though I wonder if it’s empathy acting up; or perhaps it’s the thought that this all will happen to me too. That I may feel like my outward appearance is all that matters, but in the end it doesn’t really, and the small pains in my intestines from parasites in Iraq, and the pain in my joints from jumping off planes, all these form the symphony of death. And I’m thinking about how Luis had seemed so straight forward, tough, stately, and that he had seemed like a man who was always just that (though I’m very aware that such things are rarely gifts from birth but the slow process of intelligence reacting with the world, seeing what works, then staking out a stateliness through the reactions of others. I know Luis is smart enough to have gone through that process, turning defeat into victory. Becoming the stately man under whose gaze I was squirming at until pain stopped him. But that’s just it. Not judging a book by its cover and all, yet it’s seems horrendously sad that the inner workings of the man—I’m speaking of his intestines and feces now—would seem in such contrast to his actions. To his ‘being’. And yet why is that? Why is the prevalence of feces automatically something that isn’t stately? Why are the failings of the body something to stack against the words of a the mind? I’m being foolish now, like my hunters. I’m reacting like an animal. The ideas of the mind should always stand separate from the reactions to the visceral. Otherwise I end up like those who want me dead.

  “Ahem,” Dalcia says. She’s holding out the soap and the kitchen faucet is running, little streams flying out the side because the faucet head has been placed wrong. I realize that Khalid is drying his hands with a towel. He’s giving me a look like I’m crazy. And like that, without much warning, he slinks back into the basement. I hear his footsteps, and smell his odor as it wafts away. He wants nothing to do with me.

  I look around the kitchen. It seems like a nice place. Well kept. The smell of the food we ate, the plantains especially, hangs strong in the air, and I see the kitchen sink filled with pots of all sorts.

  “Are you going to wash?” Dalcia asks. She’s propped herself up on the kitchen sink and her legs dangle off the edge. How long have I been thinking? She’s staring at me intently, and I walk over to the running water. It’s cold, so I shift the handle and get something warmer, except now it’s too hot.

  “Just use the cold. Like I said, it’s too hot otherwise.”

  I turn it back to cold and wash my hands. I feel her eyes on me and remember the look Khalid gave me as he walked downstairs. Like I’m a tainted man. She, a teen who can only absorb from her environment rather than think it through, must think the same.

  I look over at her. She holds out the towel, her eyes never wavering.

  “Well?” I say as I wipe my hands dry. “How about you not stare, or tell me what’s on your mind?”

  She rolls her eyes. I put down the towel and stare at her. The room crackles around me with energy. There is something extremely u
nnerving about her stare, her legs bouncing off the edge of the cabinet. Breathe. I try to breathe and relax the grip in my chest. What is she? I think on the underground world from where I was grabbed and captured. I think that something about this girl in front of me reminds me of the woman I saved. Of the woman who turned on me and mocked me as I was forced to sit on my knees. But... There are other factors at play here. Then my mind runs off to that moment, how the pain had covered my thoughts. Why aren’t I angrier? Am I the proverbial man who questions too much, even the possible ethos of revenge that could save him? Am I the man who believes in nothing and thus will fall for anything? I, the staunchest of atheists, have a sudden pang to find god, to believe in something, to stop thinking so harshly about the world. What a release that would be. And that woman, what was she to me? Why, after she partook in trying to break me down, am I looking for excuses for her?

  Dalcia snaps her fingers in front of me. “Come back, space man,” she says, and for a second sounds like a woman much older than she is.

  I come back, breathing in her essence, the smell of her skin. Her eyes still pierce through me. What does she want? That grip on my chest tightens, the edges of my extremities tingle. What is she trying to say? What is she thinking? Perhaps its her grandfather her mind is dwelling on. Perhaps I should offer some words of support, but I don’t know them enough to say anything, do I? Yet that isn’t the point of words of consolation. They are there to ease pain. Not to speak truth.

  “I don’t want us getting in trouble for helping you,” she says.

  So that’s it? Fair enough, but I almost shrink back as I think on the fact that I could be alone out there in the world. Since when have I become such a coward? Perhaps they have broken me down beyond the point of repair. Or perhaps beyond the point of repair to become a man.

  I try to say something to this effect but it only comes out gargled.

  She rolls her eyes again and pushes herself off the counter and right into my face. My heart beats faster. I want to retort, but I don’t want to say anything to a child, do I? And yet to be dismissive seems just as harsh.