by Ana Simo
On our drive back, McCabe mentioned that Constantinople had fallen to the Caliphate shortly before dawn, which was around midnight in Elmira. The city was in ruins. Its inhabitants slaughtered. The Emperor and the Patriarch, executed. All foreign military and civilians safely airlifted. Total war had begun worldwide. I did not believe her. I never could tell with McCabe’s deadpan. Its flatness could hide many meanings, or none. Before she left, I had decided that she always meant what she said, literally. That’s how much I had ended up trusting her. Driving now through the ghostly Great Prairie toward the glow on the horizon that was Elmira, I was both sure that she was lying and ashamed to doubt her. “What are you going to do now?” I said, just to break my shamed silence. I must have looked like a clown out on that field with my shoulders shaking under the weight of a World War I gun. At least the frisson of fear at McCabe’s D.C. car registration was gone. That’s what’s good about shame. It wipes out everything else. “Nothing,” McCabe answered. I stepped on the gas so I wouldn’t have to talk. We flew through a red light at the entrance of Elmira. A Firecop car was soon on our tail. They pulled us over on a side street. Two Firecops got out. The younger one shone a flashlight on my face, then on my hands, which I kept visibly resting on the steering wheel. Even in lowly Elmira, hiding your hands from a Firecop could cost you your life. He swept the back with his flashlight, missing the Mauser on the floor under the blanket. The bullet in the chamber would have been hard to explain. The older Firecop shone his flashlight on the car plates, punching them into his tablet. He asked McCabe for her registration. He swiped it on his device, and the yellow light of the screen bathed his face while he read. Like Ezequiel, he moved his lips while reading. I was about to turn over my driver’s license to the younger Firecop when the older one said sharply that it would not be necessary. He shut down his tablet, returned the license to McCabe, thanked her, touching the brim of his helmet with two fingers, and walked back to the patrol car, followed reluctantly by his younger partner. “It’s Christmas,” McCabe explained to me. She sat back, stretched her long legs, and crossed them at the ankles, as if getting ready for a long trip. Ten minutes later we were back inside the Judge’s garage. McCabe went into the house without a glance at Rafael’s blue sedan.
Rafael was now sleeping on his left side, his back toward the door. How easy it would be for a killer to walk into the room, stand where I was, and blow out his brains with, say, a Finnish Glock 17-Pro fitted with a silencer. They must have ways to bypass the alarm on the garage door. I returned the Mauser to the gun cabinet.
McCabe was sitting at the kitchen table. She asked that we eat in the kitchen, because it smelled so good. It was hard to say no to McCabe. She asked so humbly and was so happy when you said yes. After many trips back and forth, I managed to transfer the beautiful dining-table setting to the kitchen table. The venison was slightly overcooked on the edges, but otherwise excellent. The roasted potatoes were still firm. Lowering the thermostat in the dining room on our way out had kept the appetizers fresh. McCabe ate with relish the stuffed trout, the mushrooms vinaigrette, and the avocado slices; then she attacked the meat with both hands. She soon had that blissful look on her face which I had missed so much. It was almost like old times, except that there was no music. “Tell me a story instead,” she said when I offered to put something on for her. “What about?” I said. “From your book.” Fighting off nausea, I said, “I don’t have a book in me.” She had heard that expression before. It was an odd expression. As if a book was a bodily organ, or a virus, or a fetus. Was that true? “That’s what they say, those who know about these things, those who have had books inside them, or knew someone who did,” I said. I believed them. “But maybe some books were not inside people, but outside,” she replied. Maybe others were not inside your body all the time, but came and went, slowly or suddenly. “People say lots of things that are not true,” she said. “You too?” I jumped in, recklessly. “Yes,” she said. “Me too.” McCabe then dropped her head on her chest. I was afraid that she might begin to cry. I didn’t want her to. She must not. Her grief would be unbearable, I tell her. She says it is unbearable for her, too. Stop it, then, I say. Use your willpower. I kneel in front of her, take her hands and kiss them. She lets me. They’re big, raspy, dry, and repulsive to touch, like the skin of a stuffed reptile. Yet, the overall effect is one of rough beauty, in spite of the large knuckles. Grief makes McCabe quiet and still. It makes her close her eyes and surrender her naked hands. Now that her grief is overflowing, I realize that it has always been there. When she watched the birds, chopped wood, cleaned my feet, obsessively pruned the yellow rosebush, carried armloads of packages to the waiting FedEx truck, even when she or the former inhabitant of her skin boarded a blue sedan in the middle of the night: didn’t that McCabe walk toward the car with hunched shoulders, her chin also buried in her chest? Open your eyes, I say, please, look at me. Her hands are cold. Are you ill? I say. Is she going to faint? Is she dying? Her hands are resting on her knees. I bury my face in her hands. They smell of venison, mushrooms, and, faintly, apples. I’m fine, she says. It’s nothing. I’ve been driving for two days. Don’t worry about me. When I look up, her eyes are open. She’s looking at me, and through me, at the same time. Thanks, she says. I stand up. Sorry, I say. She puts her hands in her pockets. What about some music, she says, too brightly. Good idea, I say. In the Judge’s studio I hesitate between the obvious, the trite, the strident, the maudlin. No music is good or bad enough for this moment. I would have chosen silence. But she wants music, for my sake, not hers. I choose pure joy, the saddest thing in the world. I return to the kitchen and the French horns announce the return of the briefly homesick American to Paris by night. McCabe is smoking a cigarette. Her head rests in her right hand. Her right elbow is propped on the kitchen table. She holds the cigarette with her left hand. She seems to be far away. I did not know that McCabe smoked. I stand on the threshold. “Do you like this music?” I say. “It sounds familiar,” she says from that faraway place. “What is it?” I tell her. She turns around and sees the rifle in my hands, then she looks away. “What else can I do?” I say. “I don’t know,” she says, putting out her cigarette. I load the rifle and pull the trigger. I hear a scream, then a thud, then a gurgle. The rifle butt kicked me hard in the shoulder. A donkey-kick. Good shot. Right between the eyes. McCabe is on the floor, covered in blood, eyes and mouth wide open. Soundless. Frozen. Time stops. Then she howls like she’s being skinned alive. Shows her teeth, bloody, too. Spits blood. Howls and howls and howls like a wolf. She is holding him in her arms. He looks small and dark. I saw him jump in front of her as I was pulling the trigger. I couldn’t stop.
She howled and rocked him in her arms all night. I did not dare get near her. He was dead. What could I do? I cleaned the Mauser, inside and out, and put it back in the cabinet. The other bullet was still in my pocket. From the dining room, I kept watch on them. Waiting for her to fall asleep or quiet down, so I could pry him away. Her, I could not comfort. She was suffering for the three of us. Me, I felt nothing. That’s how great my grief was. Stuck in my inner freezer. I sat on the floor, too, wrapped in a blanket when it got too cold. It seemed indecent to sit on chairs. Her howling became almost a screech at one point, a growl at another, a murmur, wail, whimper, scream, cry. This was her native language. She was eloquent in it. I began to understand it. Animal sounds are coarser than words, but more moving. “Exalted and sanctified,” she wailed. With her intestines, “May his salvation blossom.” With her lungs, “Exalted and honored, elevated and lauded.” With her stomach, growling, “In the world which will be renewed.” Rafael could recite the Hail Mary backward, “thee with is Lord the, grace of full, Mary Hail.” Rafael and I took our first communion together. His grandfather, Moisés, still alive in La Esperanza, did not get a picture. He was not supposed to know. He hates priesters, Rafael said. Ezequiel had been baptized in secret by his mother, “just in case,” but had refused the First Communion. He di
d not know how to pray.
I must have dozed. How long, I don’t know. It was less black outside, but not yet dawn. The house was silent. The kitchen lights were off. She was still sitting there, with him. Their shapes were visible in the dark-grey half-light. She was moving in place, jerking her elbows. Small movements. There were sounds, too, soft sounds. Could he be alive? I crawled to the threshold of the kitchen, for a better view. She was putting something in her mouth and tearing it with her teeth. It was his arm. I fled to the icehouse, wrapped in my blanket. In a corner, away from the pyre, I lit a small fire. My stomach wanted to vomit. I didn’t. I won. In the morning, I returned to the house. All I could manage was a quick glance through the kitchen window. She was still sitting in the same spot. Chewing. His limbs and head had been ripped from the trunk. She was now pulling out his intestines. I ate snow. It was my sedative. Several times that day I returned to the kitchen window. Each time I was able to watch a little longer. By nightfall, not much of his body was left. The last time I peeked she wasn’t there. Neither was he. The stove and the table seemed to float in the grey twilight. A charcoal shadow was visible on the floor. She crossed in front of the window, barely missing me. From behind a tree, I saw her haul two heavy black garbage bags to the icehouse. Soon smoke was coming out through the icehouse roof. She tended the fire for a while before returning to the house. The lights went on in her bedroom. She drew the curtains across the windows. My feet were numb. I couldn’t stay outdoors any longer. I was still afraid of her, but physical pain often trumps common sense, as any torture subject will confirm.
The kitchen stank like a slaughterhouse. A faint smell of bleach could not mask the stench of blood and feces. I barricaded myself in Rafael’s room. I drank some of his orange juice. When that did not make me heave, I ate his saltine crackers. I have been on a saltine cracker diet ever since. It’s all I can eat. He had left his wallet, keys, and wedding ring on the night table. Inside the wallet I found a picture of the three of us at a school picnic. I am lounging on the grass, with my head on Glorita’s lap and my gaze sourly fixed on something to the side. She is leaning with her back against a tree trunk and looking straight at the camera. He is standing slightly behind her, looking at me. She is tanned and radiant in her yellow halter top, cutoffs and big hoop earrings. He and I are not as ugly as I remembered. We are just scrawny and tense. He is cross-eyed behind his cheap plastic eyeglasses. That is not visible in the picture, but I know. Four deep white creases show that the picture has been folded in his wallet for a long time. The date is 1976. We were not yet twelve.
I picked up his car keys with a tissue and stuck them in the blue sedan’s ignition. The photo, the ring, and the other keys I hid behind the old furnace, along with his notebook, and Mrs. Crandall’s scarf and Shangri-La logbook. They still must be there. His empty suitcase and his briefcase were gone. Had she also thrown them in the pyre? Wrapped in Mrs. Wilkerson’s parka, I ventured to the icehouse shortly before sunrise. The pyre was still burning. It was now shorter, blacker, and wider. Only a charred bit of femur was visibly human. The rest of his remains must have been sandwiched in the middle of the pyre to ensure incineration. I added more wood to the pyre. The sun came out. Light vibrated in the dark-blue winter sky. A few fat robins sauntered on the holly branches. It was one of those perfect winter mornings that made my mother weep, so rare and splendid were they in this new land. For the past thirty-one hours, my mind had been empty of all thought or feeling. Fear, repulsion, cold, nausea, painful feet were all bodily reactions, like when you cut off a lizard’s tail and it keeps jerking. All I knew was what I saw, heard, touched and smelled. Looking at the luminous sky I felt sorry for McCabe. Why had she done any of this? She had not killed him. I had. A warm and dense fluid filled me, clogging my nose. I couldn’t breathe. Pity is entirely physical when you experience it for the first time so late in life. As I made my way back to the house and slowly up the stairs to McCabe’s bedroom, fear and pity racked me, neither strong enough to dislodge the other. I stopped several times to catch my breath. Her door was slightly ajar. She was sitting by the window. Her hair was still wet from the shower. She was wearing jeans, grey socks, and her red plaid shirt. All clean. Her boots, shiny, were by the radiator. The flowers still looked fresh in their vases. The room smelled good. She must have burned her bloody clothes, I thought. McCabe turned her head toward me. “I’m sorry,” I said and she nodded.
I saw the car as it crossed the Elmira Bridge. Long before it started coming up Round Hill. I knew immediately it was them. I ran upstairs to warn McCabe. We still had time to escape through the farmland in back. I hesitated in front of her door, my arm raised, about to knock. I can’t remember exactly what went through my mind. It was such a long time ago. Maybe I thought her wealth would protect her. I do remember turning around, and hiding in the cellar. From there, I saw McCabe being taken out of the house with her arms handcuffed behind her back. Her head was covered in blood. They had beaten her up brutally, as they always do when they first get you. They would torture her. One State Security henchman kicked her in the back. She fell face down on the snow. Then all three kicked her and stomped on her until they fell on their knees, breathless and exhausted. No sound came out of her. They remained there for a few seconds, kneeling around the majestic fallen figure as in adoration. Then they slowly dragged her to their car, leaving a red trail in the snow.
The house was searched many times over the next few weeks. They never found me. The closest they got was when one of them shone a light under the Judge’s bed. I flattened myself inside a crack. What’s that thing?” he said.
About the Author
Ana Simo is the author of a dozen plays, a short feature film, and countless articles. A New Yorker most of her life, she was born and raised in Cuba. Forced to leave the island during the political/homophobic witch-hunts of the late 1960s, she first immigrated to France, where she studied with Roland Barthes and participated in early women’s and gay/lesbian rights groups. In New York next, she co-founded Medusa’s Revenge theatre, the direct action group the Lesbian Avengers, the national cable program Dyke TV, and the groundbreaking The Gully online magazine, offering queer views on everything. Heartland is her first novel.
Restless Books is an independent, nonprofit publisher devoted to championing essential voices from around the world, whose stories speak to us across linguistic and cultural borders. We seek extraordinary international literature that feeds our restlessness: our hunger for new perspectives, passion for other cultures and languages, and eagerness to explore beyond the confines of the familiar. Our books—fiction, narrative nonfiction, journalism, memoirs, travel writing, and young people’s literature—offer readers an expanded understanding of a changing world.
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Copyright © 2018 Ana Simo
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without the prior written permission of the publisher.
First Restless Books paperback edition January 2018
Paperback ISBN: 9781632061508
eISBN: 9781632061515
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944633
Cover design by Na Kim
Typesetting and eBook by Tetragon, London
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