by Mary Morris
The salty water stung my skin; my lips were cracked. When we got back to land, we realized how burned we were, but neither of us cared. We hardly spoke on the ride back to the city.
That night after she dropped me off, my skin burned and I could not sleep. I lay down on my bed, still feeling the sand, the sun on us. I thought of the deep sadness in her eyes. All night long, whenever I closed my eyes, I saw hers.
After that night I began to dream of Isabel. I saw her in the turquoise blue sea. She was swimming, waving to me. And then she turned, diving like a fish, and I watched her swim away.
Twenty-one
LATER Major Lorenzo returns and says that the people who spoke with me yesterday would like to speak with me again. It is just a formality, he says, while we are trying to clear this thing up. Again he laughs, makes his usual comments about red tape, but something about him is altered. “It is taking too long,” I say.
“Oh,” he assures me, “it’s just a matter of a little time now.”
First we drive toward the Miramar, which is not the way we went before, and then, just before reaching the sea, we veer to the right and head straight out of the city, along the old port with its rotting docks, ships that look as if they haven’t sailed in years. It is a cloudy day and for a while I can catch glimpses of the sea until we turn off again, heading toward an industrial part of town that I did not even know existed.
Though I cannot say that I mind getting out of the hotel, it bothers me that we are not going the way we went before. We are going to a different place so I try to memorize the route, thinking it might be useful, but everything looks the same. The buildings could be buildings anywhere. We pass a park with empty swings that I do not recall passing the other day. People line up for food around the block at a ration store. An old woman walks home, a chicken dangling from her fist.
I cannot determine if we are going east or west and Major Lorenzo is oddly silent, staring straight ahead, as if there is no longer any reason for politeness. He does not ask me if I want the window up or down, but rolls it down, all the way, his arm resting on the door. The wind blows my hair straight back like when a dog sticks his head out the window of a moving car. We drive past the Plaza of the Heroes of the Revolution where the giant statue of a worker stands, and now I am certain we are going a different way and we are going to a different place.
Details that did not matter before seem critical now. What are the three things ocean navigators require to set their course: the celestial bodies, the wind, ocean swells. But the sky is cloudy and I cannot see the sun. The wind would be blowing off the sea. And I cannot read the ocean swells. No buildings look familiar, but the billboards all look the same. The smiling worker in the sugarcane field, the circle of tobacco rollers working together. There are no more distinguishing landmarks and I cannot get my bearings.
We are leaving the city by a highway and from what I can determine we are heading northwest. Once again wild primrose grows on the median strip. Along the road, sugarcane workers wave, and some try to hitch a ride. Major Lorenzo waves back, but signals no, his hand twisted up into an apology. They see his olive green shirt, the bars on his sleeve. Some salute and he gives little salutes back.
The sun is warm on my face and I close my eyes, thinking that this will all be over soon, and yet it seems as if there is nothing but time. The road has few cars, but many people are walking, and most hold out a thumb when they see us. A woman in a pink dress with gold earrings tries to hitch a ride. This time Major Lorenzo smiles and shrugs. He and his aide share a glance and laugh. I know if I weren’t in the backseat they would give her a ride.
At last we come to a road that we follow to a small town. In the town all the houses are cinder-block and it doesn’t exactly feel like a town. There is barbed wire and a kind of fence around it and soldiers seem to be everywhere. I realize we have come to some kind of a barracks. Some official place. We pull up in front of a simple cinder-block building with few windows and no door and both Major Lorenzo and his aide leap out and quickly lead me inside.
Inside the dark, cool building, a soldier is waiting at the door. “Thank you,” he says to Major Lorenzo and asks me to follow him. I turn to Major Lorenzo, who nods. “It’s all right, Maggie,” he says. “We will be right here.”
I panic at the thought of being separated from Major Lorenzo, who gives me a small salute as he gave the people who lined the road. “Please,” I ask, surprised to hear my own voice, “can’t you come with me?” He shakes his head and makes a motion with his hand to follow the soldier who is waiting for me at the door of a room.
In the stark room with just a desk and three chairs, a man in uniform sits at a desk. He has more bars on his sleeve than Major Lorenzo does, so I assume this is his superior. Next to the man sits the overweight man who spoke with me before. He is dressed in the same civilian clothes he wore the other day—a blue guayabera that has crescent-shaped sweat circles under the arms—and the air is heavy with the smell of sweat. Neither man rises or shakes my hand, but the man in the uniform motions for me to sit down.
“Miss Conover,” he begins, “we are hoping that you will cooperate with us. We seem to have a puzzle here, some pieces of which are missing, and we are hoping you will provide what we need. We have some things we would like to ask you and after we ask you these things—if we are satisfied with the answers—you may go. That is, you may return. We are as anxious as you are to finish with this matter and send you home.”
Tears well up in my eyes. “Yes,” I say, “I am ready to go home.” I bite my lips, fight the tears. I do not want them to see me cry. I feel prickly sweat break out on my skin and I am trembling. I don’t want them to see me sweat. I breathe deeply, but it doesn’t seem to work.
“Good, then we both want the same thing and that is very important, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that is very important.”
“Could you please tell us who you work for?”
“I work for Easy Rider Guides.”
“And what is the nature of your work?”
I answer questions I have heard before by rote. “I do updates. I visit places, hotels, restaurants. I write about them.” Something in the way he asks these questions makes me feel he is trying to bore me, make me feel sleepy. Put me off-guard.
“And do you always befriend people when you travel?”
“I meet people when I travel.”
“And whom did you meet when you were last here?”
“I don’t remember. No one in particular.”
“We have reason to believe,” he said, leaning forward into his hands, “that you became friendly with Isabel Calderón when you visited la isla two years ago. Is that correct?”
I try to think of a way out of this direct question and I cannot find one, but I am thinking that if I just answer the question then we can get on to something else and I can begin to think about going home. “Yes, that is correct.” I close my eyes as I answer. Friendship cannot be a crime even here. “I met her and we became friendly.”
“And so,” the fat man says, “you lied to us before.”
I am trying to decide if I should respond to this, but the man in uniform ignores what he says. “And how would you categorize that friendship?”
I shrug. “We did some things together. She took me to the beach.”
He and the fat man exchange glances as if they think that at last they are getting somewhere. And I suppose that in some sense they are, but I wish they weren’t. I am trying to stay one step ahead of them. To give them what they want so as not to annoy them and yet not give them so much that it will create a problem for me.
“And did you not in some way try to assist Ms. Calderón in leaving la isla?”
I take a deep breath and wish now more than anything that I had listened to Lydia and never come back. “No, I did not assist her.”
The uniformed man sighs. “Miss Conover, it is better if you tell us the truth, because we can only let you go when you
do. Now let me ask you again: Did you in any way assist Miss Calderón in leaving la isla?”
“I think I would like to see a lawyer. Or someone from an embassy.”
“Yes, of course you would, but that will have to wait until later. At any rate, this is only an informal inquiry.”
“But I believe I have the right …”
He waves his hand as if he is swatting at some insect in the air. “Miss Conover, I would like you to answer the question.”
“I am sorry but I don’t know if I assisted Isabel Calderón in leaving this country.”
“Did you report your passport and plane ticket missing the last time you were here?”
“Yes, they were lost. Or perhaps they were taken from me.”
“And how were they lost? Or taken from you?”
“I don’t know. I went to get them from my bag the day before I was to leave and they were gone.”
The two men glance at each other and the man in uniform has a look of disdain on his face. He looks down at his watch, and then at me as if I am keeping him from somewhere else he has to be. I have no watch and no sense of what time it is, but there is a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach and I sense that it is lunchtime. My head is starting to ache and I think I must be hungry.
“We will take a short break now,” the overweight man says. “You might need some time to think.” The two men suddenly get up and say they will return in half an hour. A guard is told to escort me to the bathroom if I wish and get me something to drink. I am taken down a corridor, where the bathroom consists of a cement cell and a seatless toilet. I squat, only to realize that once again there is no toilet paper.
I return to the room, feeling soiled, and the guard brings me an orange drink. It is warm, but I am thirsty so I sip it slowly. I’m not sure how long I wait before the two men return with sated looks on their faces, as if they have just eaten well.
“Miss Conover,” the uniformed man begins again, “Isabel Calderón is a pathetic creature who preys on the sympathies of others. She uses people in this way. We hope you did not allow yourself to become involved with such an unfortunate person.”
“I don’t see how …”
“She cannot get along with her father so she makes a spectacle out of herself and calls that politics. That is pathetic, wouldn’t you agree?”
I am thinking about food—shrimp, fruit salad, bread. These are the thoughts that swirl through my mind. What I would order for lunch. They have eaten and they want me to know this. They want me to be hungry.
“I wouldn’t know, sir.”
“You see,” the fat man breaks in as he lights a cigarette, “we have no desire to detain you or impede you. In fact, it is not in our interests to do so. On the other hand, we cannot have our laws ignored …” The uniformed man glances at the fat man.
“Miss Conover,” the uniformed man says, “can you tell us where Miss Calderón is now?”
“I cannot. We have not been in touch.”
“She has not written to you or tried to contact you?” At last after two years I am grateful to Isabel because I do not have to lie. She has protected me so that at this moment I would be able to say the truth.
“I have not heard a word from her.”
“We have reason to believe that you are on la isla under false pretenses.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir.”
This time the two men stare straight at me. The fat man shrugs, then sighs. “Mrs. Conover,” the uniformed man begins again, “who are you working for?”
“I’ve already told you.”
“Perhaps you could tell us again.”
Twenty-two
I PICTURE Isabel living in a small town on the Costa del Sol. A town bleached white, stucco houses with blue trim. She rents two rooms that look toward the sea and she opens the windows wide, takes a deep breath. The widow who owns the house only wears black and Isabel can see her climbing the cobble-stoned hill from the market. In the morning the widow brings Isabel fresh bread, a steaming bowl of coffee laced with milk. Slowly, sleepily Isabel begins her day.
Perhaps the memoir she is writing begins like this: When I was born, he canceled Christmas. It was the first holiday to go. He canceled Easter when I was three, but I remember dipping eggs in colored dye, searching for them at the base of the tamarind tree, in the curves of the screw pine. But Christmas I have never known. Never seen the bright strings of lights, packages tied in silver bows, never tasted pudding. Only my grandmother knew how to make salted cod stew and her recipes died with her.
As Isabel sits at her wooden desk writing, she gazes out to sea. It is not the same sea she remembers, but it will have to do. It is a sea she can live with. In the late morning she walks down to the shore. She goes there to think, to put her feet in the water. When she does this, she thinks that the water her feet touch reaches the shores where her mother still lives. This gives her some small consolation, the strength to go on. She likes the feeling of cold waves through her legs, her toes sinking in wet sand.
In the afternoon she takes her manuscript to a café, where she reads over what she has written that day. She glances at the dedication page and ponders how she has dedicated this book to the gringa who helped her get away. And also to those who have stayed behind. She pauses, looking up at the blinding-white town, the brilliant afternoon sun, so similar to the liquid light with which she was raised. She thinks she should write to the gringa, but she does not. She believes it is better this way. To cut the ties, not to implicate anyone.
Twenty-three
WHEN MAJOR LORENZO drops me back at the hotel, I try to phone home, but the operator tells me the circuits are busy; I cannot get through. I ask her to keep trying, but she says she doubts she’ll be able to get through for several hours. Perhaps not until tomorrow, she says. I begin crying uncontrollably. I weep alone in my room because I know that the circuits aren’t busy. They have just decided not to let me get through, just as they will decide when they want to let me go. I am a captive as surely as if I were in a cell.
I have often wondered, since I travel so much, what it would be like to be on an airplane that is about to crash and to realize that you will not see certain people you love again. Do you think about the last time you touched that person, the kiss good-bye, the way your child’s hand felt in yours? Or is it the future that will possess you at that moment—how will my child live without her mother? How long will they grieve? What are the millions of little ways in which we need one another? I can see Todd, trying to find an object he knows I would be able to find, suddenly knowing what it is to miss me.
Someone has decided that for now I will not be able to get my calls through. That I will not hear the voices that perhaps keep me going more than I can know. Maybe this is the way they have chosen to make me crack. To let me sink into the great gray void that comes upon a person who has been lost or abandoned, who can no longer find the way home. But they will not break me because I know they cannot keep me forever and that eventually they will let me go.
Unless, as Manuel has suggested, they decide I am some kind of a spy. But that seems so far-fetched that I push the thought away. I will keep busy, I tell myself. Occupied. That is what will get me out of here. But splashing cold water on my face, I wonder how I will make it through.
The people at the hotel are getting to know me. I have only been here three days, but already they seem to be accustomed to my routines. The maids wait until I tell them they can clean my room. The waiters know how I like my coffee, at which table I prefer to sit. I like the one at the entrance, near the wrought-iron grating. Through the grating, which is really black bars, I can look into the lobby and see who is coming and going.
There are definitely regulars who frequent this place. There are certain groups of women, pretty, who attach themselves to male tourists of an Aryan nature. Two men in white suits are in the lobby every morning. I can watch them from my table through the grating, but now it occurs to me that th
ey can also watch me. I am not so unlike the monkey in the zoo. I don’t think of myself as a prisoner yet, though clearly I am one.
As I sip my afternoon coffee, the prostitutes arrive. They seem to live in this lobby, but now they flock to my table, pulling up chairs. “Hey,” says Eva, with her red lipstick and short skirt, “we’ve seen you around the hotel for a few days now.” She looks at me more closely, staring into my red eyes. “You got a cold or something?”
They must be worried that I’m cutting into their trade. “Yes, I’ve got a cold,” I tell them. They nod, concerned, and I wonder if I look sick. “And I’m allergic,” I go on. “To the sun. I get spots.”
This time they laugh. “Like a leopard,” Flora says.
“Maybe you should go out at night,” Eva says with a coy laugh. “We’ll take you out for a good time some night. You can avoid the sun.”
“Hey that’s a great idea,” María says. “You can go out with us.”
“Why not?” I tell them, my spirits suddenly buoyed by this idea. I imagine myself in dark glasses, red lipstick, a rose-pattern spandex jumpsuit around my rounded hips and ample breasts.
“Yes, you could come out with us,” María says. “We’ll show you a good time. We’ll go dancing.” She stands up and starts to dance, shaking her hips furiously. Flora looks at her with a mix of amusement and indifference. Eva claps along. A group of young Dutchmen stands at the bar and they too begin to clap. Soon Flora drifts over to their table. Business is starting to brew, so Eva and María join her and I am left alone.
A few years ago I wrote a weekly column for a travel magazine and after a while it seemed that either no one read those columns or my readers had no idea about the places I wrote about. So I began to write about places that do not exist. The Mulaganese Islands, for example, off the coast of North Africa, with their complex history of piracy and prisoners. Under Portuguese rule for four hundred years, and then British until modern times, the Mulaganese were renowned for the wool of their sheep and their strategic placement during half a millennium of colonial wars. Now they export sweaters and live on mutton stew.
