The Taste of Ashes

by Sheila Peters

  Álvaro’s brush moved softly across the paper. He was a small smudge of brown where the red curve for the road ran into the green he painted across the top of the page. The green of la finca’s grass when everything else was rustling in the dryness of November. The daily walks when he told himself hero stories about his father. His mother’s hand raised to silence him. He dipped the brush in purple.

  Vinicio’s voice in his ear. It was with the image of Joseph on a wave that Álvaro decided to try to ride this wave of emotion, the anguish entering his body and taking him once again into that office, the roof a huge drum pounded by the million-handed rain and Vinicio waiting and waiting until the rain was loud enough to drown the screams. In between the incandescent pain, his voice, reeling Álvaro back to consciousness, spoke of their childhood. How sad he had been to see Álvaro so upset at Cesár’s departure. How he’d sworn to his father not to speak the truth. It was that dry time of year when the corn was almost finished and the leaves rasped together in the breeze. Remember, Álvaro, he said. And as Álvaro turned his head away, the teeth in his earlobe, ripping.

  “When I ask you a question, answer.” The voice husky, the hand turning his head back. “Look at me and answer.” The two of them, alone in the room.

  Those eyes, Clara’s eyes, opening wells of pain. “Say, yes, Señor Fortuny.” His hand on the switch.

  Álvaro stood over the painting, pools of smeared water now where he’d let the forgotten brush drip. Setting it down, he turned to rummage in the cupboards. He mixed flour and water into a bowl and added paint powder to tint the paste the pale yellow of his childhood home. He plunged his hands in and pulled them out to smear paste across the blurred paint. His hands moved as if they belonged to someone else, hands older now than his father’s ever were, hands that had forgotten how to hold a machete, how to swing it through the underbrush to clear a path. How to cut the corn. How to plaster a house. He slopped on more paste and planted his hands again, leaving handprints layered across every inch of the big rectangle of paper.

  He paced the kitchen, letting the anger build. The skin drying under the flour tightened just as it had that day his father called him a bastard and turned away. He opened a jar of chili powder and sprinkled it across his drying handprints.

  “Yes, Señor Fortuny.” Álvaro had rumbled the syllables out of some place at the back of his throat, looking into Vinicio’s eyes as he told him how Cesár, the man Álvaro had thought was his father, had shown up at la finca waving a machete.

  “I loved you like the brother you are, Álvaro, but Cesár, he would not stop talking. Perhaps you are his son after all. Not knowing when to keep your mouth shut.”

  Álvaro threw the bowl of paste across the room, shattering it on Margaret’s bright tiles. He grabbed a knife and slit open one of the palm prints hardening in the paste on the paper. He had tried to break the ropes that tied him. He had struggled to shut his ears. Vinicio’s voice relentless.

  “Even idiots knew better than to complain when my father fucked their women. Papa took his machete easily and pinned him down. He told him about all the times. While Cesár was building the new barn. While Cesár was chasing parrots in the jungle. While Cesár was building coffins.”

  Álvaro slashed at the hands.

  “At the end of each story, he cut off one of his carpenter fingers.”

  He took one of Álvaro’s hands in his, caressing it. “He was dead before ten stories were up.”

  “Liar,” Álvaro spat, clenching his hand into a fist.

  “I could take you right to the place we dumped him. You could collect his bones for evidence. Count where the fingers were cut.”

  Vinicio’s arm chopped up and down and Margaret’s kitchen filled with the smell of lemons. The rain streaked the windows, and the lights of the city blurred across the water. Álvaro looked at the knife and the shredded paper. All that remained of his handprints were tattered ribbons and the grey day had become night.

  “But you, Álvaro, you,” Vinicio had said, peeling open each finger from Álvaro’s fist. “You have our father’s hands.”

  “Liar,” he whispered into the empty house. They always lie, others told him. The ones who studied these things. Never believe what they say.

  He lifted the knife and drew it slowly across the scar the ropes had made on his wrist until a thin line of blood leaked out. The pain brought him back and then rolled him over again. Choking, he painted a huge red circle right onto the table. He stared at it for a long time. He ran his hand across his own cheeks, feeling the whiskers rasping, bending.

  He once thought becoming a priest would give him solace. But Vinicio had destroyed that too.

  “The morning prayer, Álvaro. Lord, open my lips. Say it, Álvaro.”

  For how many years, every morning, had he begun his day with those words? With what hope! He took a pencil and bent close to the red circle, one cheek resting on the table, his eyes just inches away. His pencil started moving.

  “Open up, Álvaro. Come into the Lord’s presence singing for joy,” Vinicio teased, sounding just as he had when they were both children. “Say it, Álvaro.”

  And he finally did. He always did. If he resisted they’d simply clamp his nostrils shut and hurt him somewhere. When he parted his frightened lips, anything could happen. A spoonful of sugar, a spadeful of shit. Every morning for how many days? A splinter of ice, a cup of scalding coffee. A cattle prod and the explosion of pain.

  He drew a hundred trembling sperm in the centre of the circle, his tears pooling on the wood, smearing the paint. He drew two children, a girl and a boy. Clara and Vinicio. Two more. Clara and Álvaro. The pale faces and the black hair. Two more. Ana Elisabeth’s niece and nephew.

  “You don’t want to destroy your sister’s peace of mind, do you?” Vinicio had said.

  No, he shook his head.

  “Clara is a good Catholic mother, Álvaro. Taking care of children abandoned by neglectful parents. We don’t want to disturb that, do we?”

  No, he shook his head.

  “Promise?”

  “Yes,” he nodded. “I promise.”

  And he was gone, leaving Álvaro in the small room they’d made his cell, the graffiti on the plastered wall, handprints of blood. The festering graffiti on his body, a brand. Vinicio inside his head. He tumbled through layers of pain and fever. Layers of shame. Rage. Hate. He stopped eating. He refused to drink. He had already stopped praying. At first, his guards ignored him; he curled up as still as his body’s tremors would let him lie, and he waited to die. Floating between pain and unconsciousness, the quiet voice of his mother urging him to call back his spirit. He was a little boy again, one who hadn’t heard Vinicio’s words, who wouldn’t believe them if he had, and he was happy to open his mouth to receive the little piece of chicken she placed between his lips. Waking, he looked with such love upon the young soldier urging him to eat that the boy’s impatience turned to confusion.

  You think you are saved. Álvaro spoke to the figure of Ana Elisabeth he’d painted on the table, outlining her in yellow. You think you finally understand and then, the joke is on you. He smeared the paint across the little figure.

  The young soldier washed and shaved Álvaro, the blade across his face scraping at the whiskers still pushing through the split skin. Álvaro thought he no longer cared what happened. Then Vinicio was in the room, half a lemon in his hand. He rubbed it over Álvaro’s face, this small pain as huge as anything that had come before. The anger radiated off Vinicio’s crisp uniform like waves of heat. His eyes were burning.

  “You are such a little fish.” Vinicio swept dishes aside to shatter on the floor and tossed a newspaper on the table. Bishop Gerardi, the headlines said. Murdered. A colour photograph of the body sprawled face down on the garage floor, a pool of blood. Álvaro breathed in and out like a tired dog. Another lie, he told himself. It was not possible. Not now.

  “You priests,” Vinicio said. “You profess your faith to the ignorant, t
hen pray for a martyr’s death and leave them to suffer their own stupidity. Your little informer, ringing at Clara’s gate, saying you’d asked to meet her there. She had a gift, she said, for the children.”

  Clara knows, Álvaro thought. We are all safe if Clara knows.

  “Luckily I was there,” Vinicio said, and Álvaro’s hope vanished. “I took her little package, thinking her fear was for my uniform. Then I saw what was in the package. The huipil and sash from her village, the stupid cow. She had recognized me. A pity. You see, Álvaro, everything you do to help them only makes it worse. They would all have been better off if you had stayed inside the churches where you belong. You stir these people up. You get them into trouble. And then you abandon them.”

  Two soldiers brought her in. Even though her face was bruised and swollen, one eye completely shut, he recognized her. Ana Elisabeth. Her right arm had been pulled out of the socket and made an ugly bulge under her torn blouse. Her skirt was clotted with blood and feces. When she saw Álvaro, she went rigid, her moaning silenced. They stared at each other. She spoke first.

  “You,” she hissed. “You hear his confession and give him forgiveness.”

  “No,” Álvaro cried. “He’s lying.”

  She pulled herself away from the men and leapt toward Álvaro. He heard her shoulder bones grind as he caught her, gagging at the sound, at her stink. Shards of glass sliced her bare feet. The pain stopped her and she looked down at her arm, not understanding what was wrong. Her mouth opened and closed. Opened and closed. He pushed her toward Vinicio, who sidestepped neatly. She swayed there in the middle of the room, the men ranged around her, waiting. Her mouth opened again and words came out like angry wasps, a swarm of high sharp noises, voices quarrelling with each other, pleas for help, names, no, no, no. The terrified guards backed toward the door; one crossed himself. It was her village, Álvaro realized. The villagers who lived inside her.

  Álvaro had forced himself to walk across the broken glass toward her, his eyes seeking hers. Holes into blackness. Her screams became the cries of people burning. Álvaro heard the flames and smelled the smoke, the burning flesh. He lifted his hands to his ears and she spat in his face. He staggered back and, for that moment, felt as one with Vinicio and the guards. She terrified him and he hated her. He hated her for bringing him to this place, for her peasant stubbornness, for the human stink of her fear. He hated her for all the reasons the others hated her and he was as relieved as they were when Vinicio pulled out a pistol and shot her, a small hole in the centre of her forehead. The noise stopped and Ana Elisabeth Yax dropped like a stone, the air whooshing out as she hit the floor. The soft thump of a body falling to the ground, the crunch of glass.

  Álvaro tried to paint that thump; he made little mounds along the edges of the table, little mounds with twists of cloth, a leg, and a bare foot. When he saw that he’d painted the foot broken, the bones tearing through the skin, a detail he didn’t remember until now, he dropped his head onto his arms and slept. Outside the drawn curtains, it was still raining.

  When he woke up it was midday. The rain had stopped. The wind had stopped. The fridge hummed in the big house and the furnace rumbled.

  He left the mess and went upstairs to stand in the shower. He bundled his dirty clothes into the washing machine. He dressed quickly, hating the sight of his body. The scars and the flush of blood just under the skin. He tried but could not shave, could not stand the sound of the razor scraping the whiskers. He was afraid of the tree branches scratching against the bathroom window, the radiators popping and groaning. He checked all the doors and rattled the window latches.

  He lay back on his bed, remembering Walter driving him north through the mountains still topped with snow. His introduction to Canada. The great empty highways, the fresh green of spring. And the light. The gift of beautiful light that never seemed to end. He’d liked to drive in the pale twilight, down the back roads and through the quiet little towns, looking at the farms and the roadsides white with blossoms. Walter telling him until you’ve lived through a winter here you won’t truly understand the light’s magic.

  He always thought of Isabel in that summer light, Isabel as a young woman, her body so alive and responsive. He had tried not to think of her often, not allowing himself the pleasurable pain. But she snuck in when he felt most unworthy. He thought of her with her two young boys attaching themselves to her with the openness and familiarity that he longed for — her sitting on a chair and one of the boys standing behind her, leaning over her, arms dangling over her shoulders, face turned to tell her a story, mouth right against her ear. One with a head in her lap, playing with her fingers. The young one in her arms, head on her shoulder, eyes closing in sleep. Leaning up against her, one arm around her legs, head against her hip. He thought of what he had given up and congratulated himself for his strength, his faith. Told himself they were all better off without him.

  He slept again and awoke, thirsty. He drank two glasses of cold water standing at the bathroom sink. It slid down, cold, into his stomach. He poured a third and went down to the library to find Margaret’s brandy. He dumped a big splash into his glass and sat in one of the chairs. Isabel. He sipped his drink, the brandy burning its way down. Isabel, with her ear to his chest, giggling as she listened to the noises of his body. Holding his arms while mosquitoes bit him so he’d think of her every time his clothes moved across his itchy skin. As if he’d needed reminding.

  In a slow dream, he returned to the kitchen, retrieving a paintbrush from the litter on the table, and laid a clean sheet of paper on the counter. Half- asleep, he outlined the lobe of her ear, the brush tracing the delicate passage inside. His tongue remembered. Sheet after sheet he painted, her breasts, her thighs, her mouth, the wisps of hair on the back of her neck. The imprint of her feet upon the soles of the red sandals. He had found a safe place at last, a place where Vinicio had never been.

  Fatigue dropped on him like a blanket but he could not leave Isabel behind. He dragged in a rug and spread it out under the table. He set his glass of brandy beside one table leg, curled up on the rug and covered himself with an old sweater. He fell asleep remembering the last time he was with Isabel, her face above him in the dim light of the bedroom, the curtains moving in the breeze from the half-open window.

  †

  A key in the door brought him, panicking, awake. A voice calling his name sent him back into his dream, and for just a moment, his body moved as easily and quickly as it had moved to lift Isabel off him and scramble for his clothes. Then he struck his head on the table and got tangled in the table legs. Walter and George stood in the doorway looking at him in dismay as the brandy glass slid across the floor and shattered. He felt as frantic, as half-dressed as he had that other time.

  “I’d say he’s been on a three-day toot by the looks of him,” Walter said, a derisive smirk on his old face. Álvaro lunged at him, yelling for him to get out, get out, get out, but George was already between them, leading Walter away, sitting him down in the living room before turning to Álvaro. He approached him with the delicacy he’d use to approach a jumper standing on the guardrail of a bridge. One hand out. The eyes demanding contact. Álvaro did not want those eyes looking at his paintings. His body blocked the door to the kitchen; he spread his shoulders and held his arms out like a goalie filling the net. Seeing his distress, George backed away, explaining how they’d phoned several times knowing he was alone. How they left a dozen messages.

  “I insisted we come.” Walter’s voice was flat, drained. He wasn’t going to wrestle Álvaro to the floor this time. “I thought you’d killed yourself. I didn’t want the family to find you. Now that I can see you haven’t, can you tell me where the toilet is?”

  Álvaro pointed down the hall and waited until Walter shuffled out of the room to sit down himself. George perched on the arm of a chair beside the Christmas tree, his long body agitated, folded in awkward lines. Álvaro closed his eyes.

  “You’ve been maki
ng pictures?” George’s voice was careful. A tremor of something like awe underneath.

  Álvaro nodded.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m not sure. You startled me.” He breathed in and out, the only noise in the quiet house. The toilet flushed.

  “He was terribly worried,” George said.

  “If I die in a state of mortal sin, he’ll take it as a personal failure.”

  “You know we’re all worried about you.”

  “It helps to know that one day I’ll be dead. I saw a woman shot once.” He made a gun of his finger. “Poof! All her pain and anger vanished. It was,” he paused, “a relief.”

  “You must promise that you’re not planning anything.”

  He stared at George for a long time without speaking. His face was framed by the fir boughs behind him.

  “Don’t,” George said.

  The bathroom door opened.

  Something about his insistence angered Álvaro. His conviction that if you decided not to do something, you wouldn’t do it.

  “You must promise,” he said again.

  Álvaro’s voice was a hiss. “The last time I promised anything was when my torturer said to me Nuncas mas. ‘Never again, right, Álvaro?’ I had promised to behave because I thought I was going to be killed at last. He carved it into my back to seal the bargain and I was still alive when they dumped me beside the road.”

  Vinicio had said Álvaro didn’t deserve a martyr’s death. It would be much better if he lived, knowing what he had brought about. If he lived to see the ruin of all their priestly dreams, their communist plans. Never again, he hissed.