Year of Plagues

by Fred D’Aguiar

  Yes to the safe zone of the streets of the city. Yes to the lion of authority lying down with the lamb of the citizenry. Yes to free health care and free college education for all. Yes to the call for closing all prisons. Yes to the demilitarization of all our military. Yes to the porous borders between Mexico and the US, as it is between Canada and the US. Yes to the lamb dictating to the lion what the lion can and cannot do. Yes to the bird path of all our travels as we fly over checkpoints and border walls and ports and stations. Yes to nonviolence in all disputes. Yes to the barrel of a gun as a vase for the stem of a flower. Yes to the power of the flower over the barrel of a gun. Yes to laughter. Yes to hugging a tree, a stranger (masks and social distancing notwithstanding), an enemy, such as my cancer.

  I dig a hole for a plant in a pot in desperate need for room to spread its tight bundle of roots hemmed in by that pot. And that plant blossoms almost the next day. That tells me that all we need is a little stimulus to shine in ways previously unseen. I do not ask for someone to dig a hole for me. Just give me the ground and a shovel and watch me help myself to a better destiny.

  My desert cactus has five spindly branches spread untidily in the pot. Each time I water that cactus I wonder why. I see no progress in how it looks; I water it all the same along with the other potted plants around it. It maintains a nonchalant brownish, greenish, and trace of yellow that appears anemic, as if on the verge of turning brown all over and withering up, if not for my regular water.

  Once afternoon, I pass it and what catches my eye makes me stop in my tracks and look again at the source of that stimulus. There on the end of one of the five tentacles of the cactus is an enormous flower, yellow with dozens of bristling stamens, and layers inside like a catacomb in miniature. I take photos with my phone, I call everyone from the house to come and see the miracle of a flower where I thought no such thing could occur.

  Thank goodness I kept watering that cactus after I dismissed it as ugly and unproductive or at least unresponsive to my care of it. The cactus flower proves me wrong. Nothing else in the garden comes near that flower’s majesty. By evening it shrivels and lies limp on the end of the thin branch of cactus. Next morning I give it an extra drink and apologize to it, and encourage my dear, ugly, surprising cactus to keep on doing whatever it does and to ignore me. For all I know, water wants nothing to do with me. How I fetch water to a plant gets it from A to B, from where it stands to where it needs to be.

  * * *

  Friday served Crusoe in exemplary fashion, in a relationship that might be viewed as mutual role-play. Friday plays the servant to Crusoe’s superior boss. Crusoe enjoys being in charge, and Friday accepts the childlike condescension with which he receives his orders from Crusoe. Friday continually defers to Crusoe’s expertise. The cooperative relationship depends on their understanding of their roles of subservient and dominant for its success.

  You would think this could last a long time given how clear the parts are defined, even down to black skin for the servant, Friday, and white skin for the boss, Crusoe, their parts color-coded for them, so it seems. What could possibly go wrong? This would not be an allegory if everything worked seamlessly.

  Friday woke with the clearest understanding that his day would be much more enjoyable if he ditched Crusoe, if he did not wait for Crusoe to rise and begin to do things as directed by Crusoe. Friday did not harbor any ill feeling toward his boss. He simply saw his day going much better without being bossed around from sunrise to sunset. So Friday took off. He abandoned Crusoe on an island where he knew his way around and Crusoe was a stranger. He felt that he had served Crusoe for long enough for Crusoe to serve himself.

  The island was no longer a mystery or a danger. Both of them could thrive alone on it and be quite content. For Friday, his contentment centered on his freedom from servitude. What of Crusoe? To wake and find his servant gone; to think of himself as somehow needing to be self-sufficient on an island far from home. Crusoe cannot experience solitude anything like Friday’s welcome of it. Crusoe calls for Friday. He searches. He curses. He plans revenge and punishments when Friday appears at last. He slumps in a hammock, woven for him by Friday, once he accepts that Friday has left him for good, and he cries.

  I ask my cancer which one of us is Friday. I know who I want to be. (Clue—it ain’t the White boss.) If, eventually, I could be free like Friday, I would gladly serve my cancer. The thing is, I play both roles, both Friday and Crusoe. My cancer takes the opposite of whatever I play. When I decide to run and take off without warning, I know that I will find myself abandoned at any moment. Cancer slips any part assigned to it. I end up punishing myself in everything that I do against cancer.

  The Crusoe in me remains calm in the belief that Friday will see the error of his ways and come to his senses, and return as if he had gone for a stroll and forgot the time. The Friday in me walks around the perimeter of the island and ends up where he began, back at the camp with Crusoe. Both are wiser as a result of this day. Neither speaks to the other about it. Crusoe couches his orders in the form of suggestions. Friday obeys as if obedience were one of many options available to him.

  * * *

  Words fail me. I wish I could draw. My mouth seals its vault. My tongue swollen to the roof of my mouth. My head crowded with everything—music, images, things, smells, even touch and taste, but not one word takes shape in there for expression. I walk around the house numb and dumb, blind to the sparks that fly off the world all around me, that draw me into its ceaseless talk and flux. There is no word for this nothing that is a something all to itself outside description.

  I may be exhausted from the protests over George Floyd and a host of other Black people killed at the hands of the police. The time for silent grief is upon me. To help me mark each death as a calamity, far outside routine existence. So that I face one wall and turn from it only to face another.

  The volcano inside surrounding these killings that I keep gauging and sampling in poetry and prose and drama and essays may evade all my attempts to control it and erupt. What happens next? Will words rush to my aid? Another story to tell that staves off personal disaster. Who knows? There are no words for the deliberate taking of a life that satisfy me. There is the continual evasion of meaning in the moves made by my art to capture this police behavior.

  I took cancer to be my challenge of a lifetime. I saw cancer as internal and a thing to be expelled from my body for my well-being. To see cancer all around me as the very history that I share with others means I can never hope for a cure, merely temporary relief from a scourge that is inside and all around me. Makes my cancer plural. Cancers. Hence its hundred thousand names.

  * * *

  I try to imagine a life and death for cancer and end up with my life and inevitable death under the microscope. All my attempts to grant cancer its independence from me fail and bring me back to the fact of a disease that has become part of me and inseparable from my being. When cancer dies—assuming I win this fight—something of me perishes with it. I need to make funeral arrangements for my cancer as cancer’s only beneficiary and benefactor. The casket must be closed after all cancer has gone through: the defacing surgery and medications. The ground is hallowed insofar as it belongs to a history of diseases that have dominated humanity before capitulating to scientific advances.

  Here’s the obituary: “Here lies cancer. Known to all as a rogue and a scourge to humanity, cancer made its name as incurable and unforgiving, as implacable and not amenable to the persuasions of positive thinking, crystals, aroma- and hydrotherapy, mantras, bells, incense, autosuggestion, hypnotism, chiropractic, gyroscopic, and magnetic therapies, acupuncture, meditation, hyperventilation, sauna, ice, fire, massage, and yoga.”

  The obit continues: “Cancer sought the death of every person whom it touched. Cancer was known as uncompromising and enriching of all those who survived it, even if survival meant a massive impairment of abilities due to the therapies undertaken to expel cancer. Those who have t
ried peace talks with cancer have complained of one-sided negotiations that end in deadlock with cancer walking out just as progress appears to be within grasp. Cancer remains humanity’s most formidable foe.”

  There are no flowers, no poems secreted near the gravestone, no children’s drawings. The site where cancer is laid to rest remains unmarked and plain as a waste piece of land that has to be cleared periodically of rubbish thrown there by those who do not care about public spaces. Cancer is encased in concrete to keep cancer from spreading in the soil and contaminating roots and water tables and finding its way back to the living through our fruits and vegetables and water supply.

  Cancer flies the way of crows in a straight line from one point to the next. Cancer arrives late for its own funeral and sits at the back of the room in the funeral parlor, which is almost empty. Cancer answers to the name of the dead and the living relative and sole survivor of the deceased. Cancer digs its own grave of concrete casing and fills in that grave. Cancer marches from the site of the burial intent on living with double the energy devoted to the rest of its days.

  Knowing all this, I nod in recognition of an adversary I can never underestimate. I count my days with cancer in tow as borrowed time to be lived as I see fit, regardless of the company I keep with cancer in my life. Among the long list of questionable therapies, I retain all the ones that make me feel good, regardless of whether their effectiveness against cancer remains proved only as hearsay, or whether science maintains that their efficacy with cancer remains unproved.

  Call me stubborn, call me what you will, you can never say I turn away or avert my eyes, or look askance at cancer’s full-frontal assault. I face that beast, lock horns with it, grapple and tumble, and want it to know I am engaged, a little fearful admittedly, but no way near capitulating to its bully tactics of me.

  * * *

  On Duty

  DJ Cancer

  I sleep on a bed made of bones with flesh for linen and blood for color.

  I string nerves across that bedframe as if stringing an instrument.

  When I sleep, which I rarely do, that instrument plays to my dreams.

  The tune is a work song meant to conduct each moment on a chain gang,

  Or down the shaft of a mine, or in the belly of a fishing trawler.

  I work in bed as the best place to do my kind of work.

  First I dig to gain a foothold. Then I grow roots, long tentacles

  Able to grip any surface and climb and branch out. Last of all

  I send miniatures of myself on exploratory missions to establish

  New and independent colonies in the bone and flesh and blood world.

  Those miniature selves if they succeed send back messages

  That strengthen my hold on you and make it harder to uproot me.

  * * *

  Bloomsday

  My cancer. Janus-faced, molecular, and spellbound. Thief of my sleep, robber of my repose, pirate of my dreams, cancer. Bringer of night sweats, bearer of bad thoughts, bamboozler of my body functions, cancer.

  Take my hand, cancer. Walk with me today. Imagine Mid-City is a theme park of economic deprivation and we plan to explore its every nook and cranny. You hear that rooster? He escaped from the farm for a better life in the city and ended up stranded here with nothing more to do than herald another morning of gross hungers. These earplugs block him since he can be heard all over the city at this hour. Several roosters spread across the city grid.

  We pass tents set up beside walls, surrounded by shopping carts filled with knickknacks, plastic bottles, clothing, and old shoes. People asleep on cardboard arranged in the alcoves of shop doors. We say hello to a couple sitting on the roots of a tree, roots bulbous above ground pushing aside the paving stones. The couple chats as they drink from beer cans. They pause to return our hearty greeting with matching gusto. Street bins overspill rubbish scattered on the ground. Walls showcase graffiti by the same gangs or different gangs with the same territorial claims. And occasionally, a pristine garden with tended red geraniums, and yellow and white roses. The odd artificially grassed swale, oddly neat and tidy. Dogs bark and follow behind tall fences as we pass those guarded houses.

  We step in rhythm and synchrony to the perimeter of the city where it meets the sea. As my constant companion you know how much I love to hear waves and every few steps look into the distance at the flat line of the horizon at the end of the massive sheet of galvanized zinc of the sea. You know me, how I cherish sand between my toes, and sandpapering my heels. Gulls threading air, gulls I can almost reach up and pluck. Baby sandpipers in clusters chasing after whatever the retreating waves turn over.

  Race you up the beach. You may be faster than me. I can keep this pace longer. We stop and bend over to catch our breaths, or for you to catch my breath as I breathe for the two of us, doubled over, knees bent, hands resting on thighs, and peering into each other’s faces with contorted smiles. This is where we might bump fists or high-five were it not for the nature of our communion, as opposites thrown together, irreconcilable forces heading in opposing directions with the one, indivisible life.

  The key appears to be to do all this feverish living early in life, when it means twice as much and takes half the time, rather than late middle age’s half-as-much meanings and twice-the-time undertakings. How deliberate and slow I appear to a younger self (at least ten years younger) that I retain, despite the vandalism on my body by time, a youthful alter ego through whom I view everything that I do with a tinge of wonder that borders on flabbergasted, mixed with a smidgen of disdain.

  I decide to lose you on the coast and head home to Mid-City alone. You start to dig in the sand for something precious that you sniff out with your large nose and I walk away from you and break into a sprint and do not look back, and try not to listen to you calling my name. I run until I cannot take another step. I fight for breath. I recover and keep walking and do not stop until the sea switches off, and folds away out of sight, and the buildings sidle up all around me and portion off the sky, and I am back in rooster territory, at my front door with the key ready to plunge into the lock, and the door swings open leaving me with my arm outstretched, key in hand, and there on the other side of the threshold standing with head leaning to one side, and with an inquisitive expression and almost the play of a wry smile greeting me, is you.

  All this because James Joyce and I share a birthday.

  * * *

  I hope I recall this next episode in a way that helps me with my fight with cancer. The hero of that past brought to bear on my present malady. My memory of struggle and how to overcome it steered toward my present dilemma as prescription, remedy, and salvation.

  The shell pond . . . (Drumroll.) Not much bigger than an eight-person Jacuzzi, not much deeper than a roadside trench, the shell pond got its name for the bed of shells clear and wavering under fresh water. I think the adults dug it to store water from the rainy season for use in the dry season. We swam in it. The only stipulation was that we stay away from the bottom of the pond. We swam without ever touching the bed of shells. We dived for a closer look at them and after a quick inspection came up for air without kicking the bottom of the pond.

  A wood-paling fence separated the house from the shell pond. The fence was six feet tall and as many feet from the house. The shell pond was another six feet or so from the paling fence. The fence ran from the road down the side of the house and away toward the back of the house, where pens for chickens and pigs filled the enclosure. We children sometimes found a loose paling in the fence to swing to one side and duck through headfirst to get to the pond for a swim.

  The late afternoons were best for swimming, once the overhead sun dipped, its work of heating the water to a lovely cool on the skin completed. Even so we faked a shiver and dipped our toes before we dived and rose fast to avoid touching the bottom. This particular afternoon resembled all the others in the way the pond absorbed our bodies and polished our skin. A few of us wandered away and a f
ew of us remained. The strong swimmers left the young ones to jump in feetfirst or dive and dog-paddle back to the corner of the pond or simply hold on to the tall grass at the edge and kick the feet for the splash and industry of swimming.

  A cousin, about my size and six or seven like me, stood and looked at the water for a long time before she ran and jumped in far from the edge. Where was I? Holding the grass at the edge and paddling my feet as I mimicked a grown-up’s agility in the pond. I assumed the usual downward plunge by my cousin succeeded by her surfacing, and then her dog paddle with hands underwater digging at chest level, chin just above the waterline, legs kicking in a sprint. I did not look back to check on her.

  Apparently, my little cousin surfaced as expected and rather than paddle to the nearest edge, she sank out of sight again. Every child at the house had to drown a little bit first before they learned to swim in the shell pond. All of us had to dive down for ourselves and not touch the bottom and surface with a description of at least one of the shells that caked the pond.

  I heard about this next part rather than witnessed it. A grown-up on the upstairs front porch of the house, catching some cool breeze in the rocking chair and watching us for entertainment, or for something to do, since our shrieks made dozing impossible, saw the young swimmer rise and disappear again. That grown-up climbed onto the porch wall and jumped from it and in that leap from twenty feet or so above ground he scaled the fence and covered all that ground from the house to the water and landed in the pond. He landed feetfirst and held his arms out to the side to stay afloat. He dived and fished my young cousin off the bed of shells.