The Taste of Ashes

by Sheila Peters

  She took the bag of pastries from his hand and set it on the table. She pulled off his coat and pushed him into a chair.

  “Relax. She has so many clothes, she won’t even notice these are gone.”

  What a sap, she thought, as she climbed onto his lap and fed him bits of biscotti dipped in takeout lattes. She was determined to mess up his clothes and rumple more than his hair. The forked nature of man. While a thousand worries crossed his face — the friends, the girlfriend, his clothes, the girlfriend’s clothes, her wet undies on the radiator, his hair — his dick didn’t have a care in the world. It wanted to get unzipped and take a closer look at what was under the kilt. It didn’t care whose twat was up there as long as it was warm and wet. It didn’t care if it was wearing its own little raincoat either, and she ignored David’s protestations to slide down over his unprotected penis with such sudden intensity that all his anxiety was swallowed in the laughable single-mindedness of his dick. She controlled his pleasure, prolonged it, waited until his face blurred and slackened and then rose off him just as he came, just in time to get semen all over his nice black pants and the girlfriend’s kilt. It was all she could do not to laugh. But her own anger returned when an expression that could have been fury began to build in his face, something close to hate.

  The moment lengthened and stretched between them. She was climbing off his lap when the phone rang. She reached over, picked it up, said hi, and passed it to him. By the time he hung up, he was all hurried business and she was pulling on her boots.

  “We’re leaving in five,” he said, like he was some kind of gangster, and ducked into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. Janna opened his wallet. About fifty bucks in cash. A couple of credit cards. A gas card. She slid her little finger into the crack and extracted the pills. Three left. She unwrapped them and rolled them around in her palm. She wrapped one back up and dropped it into her purse. She dropped the other two pills into a teaspoon and ground them up with the back of another spoon. She added some sugar, mixed it with her finger, and stirred into his coffee.

  A car honked. He downed his coffee. She pulled on her jacket over the woman’s clothes and followed him out the door, leaving her own behind. On the street, she kissed him, tasting the coffee still on his lips. She waved at the faces peering out the window of the nice little BMW. Merry Christmas.

  That night in her small room in the empty residence, she wondered how his holiday was going. She hoped he was struggling through some complicated dining protocol at the house of rich, what did he call them? Patrons? Or listening to his mother chatter about his career prospects, suggesting women he should mate with. She wished she could have been there when the girlfriend returned to find another woman’s clothes drying on the radiator.

  She dug out her cellphone to call Jason. Maybe Trevor. She needed to talk to someone real, someone who knew her. Her smugness vanished when she saw Isabel’s name appear. Trevor must have given her the number. She paced the room while she listened to her message.

  “Hi, sweetheart.” A pause. The voice deflated. “I wanted to thank you for the bulbs you sent. I managed to get them planted even though it was so late. I don’t know how they’ll do. They’re probably used to that soft life down there.” A little laugh. “I know it’s short notice, but I’ve just talked to the airline. There’s a seat left on tonight’s plane and I’ve booked it. All you have to do is be at the airport by six-thirty.” A man said something in the background and impatience crept into Isabel’s voice. Impatience Janna knew all too well. “Well, goodbye then. I’ll meet the plane.” Distracted by something in pants.

  Janna leaned her hot cheek against the cool window, wondering how hard she’d have to press to send cracks shooting through the glass, to shatter it into a hundred lethal pieces and fall with it onto the ground below. She stood there for a long time before she realized how hot she was. How she couldn’t stand without leaning. She wanted to be curled up in her own little bed, her quilt tucked around her, her mom coming up the stairs with apple juice. She wondered if it hadn’t been a very, very bad idea to take the last pill. She slumped on the bed and phoned Greg, not sure what she was going to ask. For a bowl of soup? A ride to the airport? The phone rang and rang; when an old man answered, she’d almost forgotten who she’d dialled.

  “Who is this,” he said. “Who is this? Who is this?”

  It must be Greg’s father.

  “Have you got my car ready?” he said.

  “Your car?”

  “When will it be ready?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “Not yet. But soon.” She hung up.

  She felt all the places on her body where it hurt: her bruised thighs, the chafing between her legs, the fingernail marks on her buttocks, the whisker burn on her face and breasts. Her tender nipples. She closed her eyes against her thoughts of the woodstove in the tiny living room at home, the flame dancing behind the glass and the pot of spiced apple juice simmering on top, its cinnamon smell filling the house. She sat down on her grubby bed and pulled out her worry dolls. You’re the mother, she told one and you’re the father, she told another. And let’s have a granny and two boys. She propped them up on her pillow. That leaves you, she said, holding up a little girl doll dressed in a long green skirt and red top. The Christmas girl. She tossed her up in the air and caught her. What will we do with you?

  12

  Álvaro waited outside the open bathroom door for his turn. Margaret’s son, Joseph, bent to wash his face, his shoulder blades moving like wings under his pale skin. Álvaro was reminded of the grave where the victims had been forced to lie face down, shoulder to shoulder in a tidy row and then been shot, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Shortest to tallest. As if some demented artist had been arranging a show, an artist who could well have been in the group that gathered with him and the surviving villagers to gaze at eight pairs of scapula, heavy wings pressing what had once been frightened flesh deep into the crumbling dirt.

  Joseph straightened and scrubbed himself dry, tossing the towel over his shoulder and banishing the memory.

  “All yours, Father Al.” He grinned and jogged down the hallway to his room, jumping in little zigs and zags, practising his surfing moves. His family was going to spend Christmas week at their cabin at Tofino and this time of year the waves were, he said, great.

  The boy had been unperturbed by Álvaro’s arrival. He’d shared this bathroom with dozens of Margaret’s strays, Álvaro figured. The family’s easy familiarity made him feel like a novice again, a novice in charge of his own education. He and Chris had fit in four more sessions and he’d been free to think them through. To continue making pictures upstairs in his small room, finding stories in the chaos of sensation. No difficult questions, no how are you doings, no questions beyond did he think it was ever going to stop raining?

  The Christmas dinner at the provincial house had clarified his choice, a sign, he thought, from whatever spirits were watching over him. The old men around the table washing down turkey with wine. A forced joviality. George on one side and Walter on the other, visiting from the downtown house. Walter taking him aside, encouraging him to make a confession so he could take communion at the midnight mass. Father John, he said, had worked many years in South America. He was willing. English or Spanish.

  “The release after a good confession, one where you really get things sorted out and you know God is welcoming you to begin again.” The old man smiled. “You’ve forgotten,” he said. “How long has it been?”

  Álvaro stared past Walter at John, who looked like a dozing turtle, his nose a beak, his head all polished wrinkles bobbing in and out of his collar with each slow breath. His parish had been a few hours east of Walter’s and they’d often met midweek to prepare a meal together. To discuss parishioners over a poker game. He’d practised his stumbling Spanish with Álvaro.

  Álvaro laughed. Walter was, as usual, partly right. In spite of the pain he experienced in his sessions with Chris Mundy,
he was beginning to make confession. Finally a good confession.

  Walter spoke through a mouthful of shortbread. “Altogether too long, I’d bet.”

  Álvaro had wished only that he smoked, so he could step outside without giving offence and look at the night sky.

  When he helped stuff the last bag into the Coleman’s car, slammed the door, and waved them off, his whole body relaxed. He raised his face to the light rain and let the drops gather in his open mouth. He swallowed, tracing the water’s descent. He couldn’t remember when he had last been alone and unguarded.

  An hour later, he stood in the bright kitchen, the long wooden table scrubbed, the counters cleared, and the floor swept. He set out water, paint, and brushes. Pencils and felt pens. Paper. He pressed his hands flat upon the rough paper, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply as Chris had suggested. He thought about the roots and trunk and leaves this paper had once been — the soil and water and sunlight, the birds that had nested in its branches. He drew strength from understanding that the molecules that spun together his body with all its shattered nerves were no different than the molecules that made up the fly’s wing trapped somewhere in the fibre of this paper. He waited.

  Words floated into his head. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad tidings. He wrote them in green paint across the page and waited again, letting the memories come.

  He had told Chris about the sudden hands upon him as he stood outside Clara’s gate in Guatemala City and pressed the buzzer. It was a quiet neighbourhood. Birds chattered in the huge trees shading the gardens behind the high white wall. He had phoned and she was expecting him. A cautious invitation. Her voice uncertain, curious. Children’s voices floated up and through the razor wire coiled along the top of the bricks. There were no other sounds but the grunts of the men who clamped his mouth and wrestled him into the back of a blue van, blindfolded him, and tied his hands and feet. Birds he heard, birds and children’s voices and just before the door slammed shut, he thought Clara called his name. Álvaro?

  He’d shredded his lips against his own teeth trying to answer until the man covering his mouth threw him down and kicked his cries into whimpers. Even though you’ve seen the bodies, he told Chris, the cuts and the burns and the parts cut off, you can’t, when you’re there, imagine anything worse than this simple pain of rolling around on the metal floor in the back of a van, banging into sharp corners. There are speed bumps everywhere in Guatemala, Álvaro told her, and these men hit them fast, laughing as he ricocheted off the walls, searching for a posture that eased the pain.

  He had painted the door in Clara’s wall bright red. The children’s voices rose as butterflies; Clara became a small frog perched amidst the coils of razor wire, a bright-eyed frog looking down at the supplicant, the one on the outside. Everything on the outside of the wall was grey and streaked with rust from the iron spikes, and he was just a smudge at the red gate.

  What happens if you open that door, Chris had asked, and go inside?

  He explained that no one on the outside got to open that particular door. An invitation was required.

  “Did you have one?”

  His finger traced the coils, the dried paint rough against his skin.

  “I thought I did.” He had filled his brush with red and painted himself out of the picture.

  At first he was sure he’d been picked up by mistake. The Peace Accords had been signed, and most of the kidnappings were economic, not political. Some gang had grabbed him thinking he was the kind of rich man who lived on that kind of street. As soon as they realized he was a priest, he thought, they’d toss him out beside the road. Even as the van laboured up the steep climb into the hills north of the city, he hoped. But then he lost track of everything but the pain.

  When the van finally stopped and the doors opened, the cold rain of the altiplano washed over him. He was hauled inside a courtyard, the kidnappers laughing as they rolled him under the rain spouting off the roof tiles. To clean up his stink, they said. When he tried to speak, a boot came out of the darkness, rolled him into a corner.

  He had drawn dozens of pictures of this place, the curling up and cowering. The fear all black with streaks of purple. Purple when another breach was opened in the body. Tell me what you can, Chris said. And he had, to a certain point. Nothing subtle. Fists and boots. Cigarettes. Filth in the drinking water. But there were some things he did not tell.

  The next morning, a woman had been thrown beside him. Álvaro could smell her hair in his face and for a moment was soothed by its clean fragrance. She rolled over and he felt her breasts against his cheek. He tried to turn away, but hands held his head. The guards were forcing them into this posture. Fingers scrabbled at the buttons on her blouse and the breasts, stripped bare, were shoved in his face. A voice laughed, have a taste of these, Father.

  All awareness of her body and concern for her safety vanished. His fear was now all for himself. Father, they’d said. They knew who he was and someone wanted him here. The woman screamed, twisting and cursing until a blow cut off her voice. She went limp and was lifted away. A voice in his ear, if she’s not fond of priests, we’ll give her the real thing. He lay very still, listening to the men taking turns with her. Their grunts and her whimpers of pain. Again and again and again.

  Afterwards the guards sat under the courtyard’s roof, flicking their burning cigarettes into the wet huddle Álvaro made. They laughed at the way he jerked as the butts hissed on wet skin. The fear that kept him silent during the long hours turned on itself and blossomed into shame. Shame at how the woman’s body had aroused his. At how he’d been glad they took her and not him. The first interrogations had been, almost, a relief. Punishment he deserved. He never did know who the woman was or why she was there.

  He looked again at the words he had painted. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad tidings. After a week of questions about how many children he’d kidnapped, how many babies he’d sold to Canadians, and what orphanages he was in league with — all this he told Chris about — they’d put him in a truck and taken him back to the city. He’d not been able to keep himself from hoping as they lurched through the traffic — horns, brakes, and the stink of diesel. They’d taken him into a building, down hallways, removed his blindfold, and thrown him onto the floor. The room was an office. A desk with stacks of papers. A grey filing cabinet. Through an open door, a bathroom. Tub, sink, and toilet.

  When he saw the brown leather shoes, the pressed khaki slacks, and smelled the lemon, he’d thanked God even before he felt the hand on his shoulder and the voice in his ear. Vinicio. Even knowing what Elisabeth had seen Vinicio do, he felt same flood of relief he’d felt as a child, mixed with the same fear. If he had displeased Vinicio, he’d be punished, but he’d finally haul him up on the horse and take him back to the ranch to get cleaned up, his wounds tended by his mother, his pride soothed by Clara’s indignant defence.

  Vinicio might be angry that he’d approached Clara, but he didn’t know about Ana Elisabeth. He couldn’t know that Álvaro knew where those children came from. Álvaro had been taught a lesson and now he’d be given a warning and released.

  Vinicio made no greeting. His dark blue eyes slid over Álvaro without any acknowledgement. Clean him up, he told the men. The chiding voice, the what kind of nonsense have you gotten yourself into this time Álvaro, was absent. Protecting them both, Álvaro told himself. Pretending indifference. Vinicio watched a guard dunk Álvaro in the bathtub, the hot water stinging the burns, the bruises livid in the bright light.

  Barely able to stand as he crawled out of the tub, Álvaro had wiped himself with a towel and apologized for staining it with his blood. He tried to joke about his swollen and bloody testicles, saying he didn’t need them much anyway, all things considered. He didn’t understand the signal Vinicio made to the guard until the man’s boot connected with his groin, dropping him in agony onto the tiles. When he regained consciousness, the toe
of Vinicio’s shiny shoe was lifting his cheek off the floor. He’d bent close and whispered, “This is no joke, Álvaro.”

  And Álvaro knew then what his body had already understood.

  In the bright kitchen in Point Grey, he stared at the words on the paper. He finally reached for a paintbrush, dipped it in the glass of water, and stirred it into the paint. Two ovals of brown appeared under the words. Then he flipped the paper around so the words were upside down at the bottom of the page and the shoes were standing on top of them. He was aware of his testicles hanging loose in his sweatpants, cowering in there as if Vinicio’s shoes were in the room with them. No jokes, he whispered and climbed the two flights of stairs to his room to change into snug jockey shorts and jeans.

  Back downstairs, he stood in the doorway of the kitchen staring at the paper, his heart pounding with the same terror it felt when he realized Vinicio would not save him. Two brown ovals. The chasm opening.

  The phone startled him and for the first ring he thought it was Vinicio’s cellphone ringing in the torture room, Clara telling her brother she’d heard at last from the Oblates, that Álvaro had been needed in the north. For a funeral. Vinicio had repeated her words out loud, nodding his head and smiling at Álvaro slumped against the wall. Knowing one source of hope was gone.

  “It was from you he learned his kindness,” Vinicio had said to her. “The church is lucky to have him.”

  When the second ring sounded, Álvaro remembered where he was. He picked up the phone and looked out into Margaret’s winter garden. Orange berries and dripping green foliage. A girl asked for Joseph. Out of town, he said.

  He’d just turned back to look at his painting when it rang again. Did he know when Joseph would be back? He explained and then unplugged the phone. He set aside the words and the shoes and pulled out another piece of paper, the girl’s voice still reverberating in his head. So young and breathless with the expectation of Joseph. Crushed at his absence. He thought of the boy surfing, a child really, unaware of the full power of the water bearing him aloft. Álvaro wanted to be able to ride the turbulence of his own childhood, a turbulence that linked him to the turmoil that rolled like great waves through Guatemala. A turbulence that reached back, if Vinicio spoke the truth, even before his birth and contaminated everything.