The Iliac Crest

by Sarah Booker

  “Well, as I see it, you haven’t asked these questions either,” I retorted. “You base everything on conjectures, abstractions, paradigms that no one has ever tested, theories without evidence, hallucinations, metaphysical outbursts, cheap surrealisms . . .”

  I was prepared to continue, but the False One lifted her face and looked at me as if for the first time. She was silent. I found myself obliged to do the same.

  “Does it really worry you so much that we know your secret?” she finally asked with the oblique, sickly smile I was already accustomed to. My anger returned at once.

  “You are all completely insane, even the True One agrees with me. You, all of you, have lost it,” I said, standing up from the table and gesticulating wildy in the air. I stormed out the back door and headed straight for the ocean.

  As I’ve said, you go there in order to cease knowing. To become intoxicated by the smell. To lose yourself. There, at the water’s edge, I concluded that, when all is said and done, if by some stroke of misfortune I actually was a woman, nothing would change. There was no reason for me to become sweeter or crueler. I continued walking down the beach, kicking stones, pausing to pick up seashells from time to time. Not any more serene or any more intimate. Not any more maternal or any more authoritarian. Nothing. Everything could continue to be the same. Everything was a rough mirror of the Self. And the words I had wanted to shout at the strangest visitor in the world began to accumulate in my ears. Their echoes blended with the noise of waves crashing against the cliffs. The squawking of the seagulls. So is this what it was all about? I asked myself suddenly, as if I could’ve come up with an appropriate response. In fact, I had no idea what I meant. Silence washed away my words and, with them, the feelings that had caused them to surface, the emotions that had validated them. My silence told me more about my new condition than any lecture my Emissary gave. And then, caught up in all that remained unsaid, I turned back.

  And then I turned back.

  Women, I assume, understand. To the men, it is enough to know that this happens more often than we think.

  SOMETHING HAPPENS IN THE WORLD WHEN YOU TURN BACK. That slow trance—through which the subject is distanced from the object and approaches, backward, an unseen place—always has consequences. It has nothing to do, as I believed for so many years, with erasing the world or stepping away from it. It has to do, I was just coming to understand, with a leap or, better, with how in the blink of an eye a fascination with the visible and visual gives way to a fascination with the invisible visual. I suppose there is no need to explain any of this to the men and women who have done it. I suppose all of you remember, just as you moved backward, as you crossed the borders of the real without realizing it, that it was impossible to close your eyes. For all the terror, for all the commotion, for all the unease you feel, you cannot close your eyes. You see. You see voraciously. You cannot stop seeing.

  THE WINDOW OVERLOOKING THE SEA IN THE HOSPITAL’S ELITE ward measured no more than five feet high and three feet wide. A rectangle. I paused to look at it one morning as I carried out my obligatory visits to the dying. From the moment I walked into the ward, I noticed that, unlike its usual semidarkness, the room was pierced with light. The window was exceptionally clean. From afar, the mercurial clarity it emitted gave the impression of a mirror. I checked on the patients, read their medical histories, prescribed morphine and other medications, and ordered changes in clothing or positions without being able to ignore the almost silver, absolutely overpowering light streaming through the window out of the corner of my eye. At times I had the strange sensation someone was spying on me. I remembered Juan Escutia, and asked myself repeatedly—between each prescription, as I authorized visits—if that had been the cause. If everything, for him, had begun with the violence of this light.

  The papers I’d continued to examine despite the Director’s threats contained versions of the incident that were quite unclear. One handwritten report by some doctor, now retired or dead, read:

  The problematic patient Juan Escutia unexpectedly went mad. He tore his shirt off and, without any warning, ran to the window, first stopping to reach for something under another patient’s bed. When he found the mallet, he smiled like a lunatic and his race to the window took on new energy. This all happened so quickly that all of us present for the horrible event—two nurses, one guard, and myself—couldn’t do anything. It took a long time for us to react. We were only able to run toward him and the broken window when, with the same speed, he threw himself out of it. I would rather not describe what we saw next, though I will if they order me to. Sincerely.

  His reticence touched me. This man, surely a middle-aged doctor who accepted this job with the same naïveté I had, thinking his knowledge would help others die peacefully, was mentally incapable of allowing horror to influence his words. Nevertheless, as you can see, the horror filtered through them with surprising ease. It was the horror of freedom. There you might find the euphemism concealing the fundamental and cruel complicity our establishment was built on: to call the dying, those in agony, those poor, eternally defeated creatures, patients. We all knew they were not. We were all aware that no one left this place alive. We dealt with people to whom we hadn’t yet found a sufficiently technical or neutral way to describe, without the weight of conscience, the underlying truth about our position: we were not doctors, but more or less efficient guardians of death; we were its moral bishops, its distant pawns. This was made very clear by the contradiction in the reticent doctor’s document: he did not refer to Juan Escutia as just any patient, but one who was problematic. Did this mean that, among all our resigned, moribund patients, he was the only one who still fought to live? And, if this were true, as all signs indicated, was his death a way of affirming his alliance with life? And, if this were also true, and considering that such an alliance led him directly to his own demise, could there then be, at least, two deaths or, in any case, more than one? The questions, multiplying like white blood cells, held me close to the window for a long time. Immobile. Exactly how the Director later found me.

  It was rare for an administrator of his rank to pass through the wards, let alone in search of one of the doctors. Even if I hadn’t been completely absorbed in my own thoughts, his appearance at my side would have surprised me.

  “Interested in a cigar?” he asked, taking my elbow as if I were an invalid. I consented, not only because I had no other alternative, but because I was enticed by the idea of a good cigar. I imagined the moment of inhalation, slow yet firm, felt the smoke lurking behind my teeth, gliding freely across my tongue, separating it slowly from my saliva. While I walked with him toward the exit, I couldn’t help but think I really was a man easily seduced by tasteful things, even within this dismal graveyard. The Director, unlike the Betrayed and so many other women, seemed to understand this very well. Perhaps it was his unique way of remaining outside the chaos of death, a certain kind of intimate and isolated protest, but the discreet perfume emanating from his body, his exquisite tie, his way of walking as if on clouds, and the composure of his movements removed him, and whoever was fortunate enough to be at his side, from the establishment and transported them to distant places surely created and destroyed in another century.

  “No, we aren’t going to my office,” he informed me as I was about to cut off his path. “If you don’t mind, we’ll take a walk on the beach.”

  I imagined this was the kind of man whose very existence would have driven the Betrayed crazy. There are few things that bother a determined and efficient woman more than a man of unhurried, delicate gestures who makes a show of his lack of aggression. I also suspected women like the False One could seduce him without much difficulty, but later, once our shoes touched the sand, I reconsidered. In reality I didn’t have the faintest idea about Amparo Dávila, her tastes, or her mechanisms of seduction and rejection.

  “I understand you have visitors at home,” he mentioned distractedly, fixing his gaze on the sparse, barely
visible clouds. I accepted his cigar, lit it somewhat clumsily, and, holding it in my right hand, continued down the beach. The day was perfect: there was sun, clarity, surly sounding birds, silvery-white foam on the crests of the waves, and a certain warmth all around indicating spring’s proximity.

  “Family?” he insisted when, lost in the satisfaction the cigar provided me, I didn’t answer his question. Just as I had imagined only a few minutes before, I slowly yet firmly inhaled, and the smoke, indeed, lurked in my mouth and glided across my tongue. The walk and the cigar had the effect I both longed for and feared: I was suddenly in a great mood and felt somewhat loquacious.

  “No, are you insane? Those women aren’t my family,” I said with a confidence our relationship neither encouraged nor permitted. “One of them arrived at my house one night looking for shelter from a storm, and the other—well, the other comes from an uncomfortable place in my past.” I inhaled the smoke once more and, as a result, didn’t pause to think about the inappropriateness of my response, the absurdity of my comments.

  “Shelter?” he repeated. “Are you sure she was only looking for shelter?”

  I realized he knew more than I’d thought. I eyed him with sudden distrust. I was sure they didn’t use tiny cameras or powerful telescopes to spy on us. Not only did the hospital lack the finances to acquire that kind of equipment, but it was much simpler to entrust the job to the messengers who delivered our food or the cleaning team sent at the beginning of each season to keep the homes in perfect condition. I suppose it was precisely from them that the Director learned about the two strange women in my home. But his question, his apparent innocence cloaked in stutters and good sense, made me suspect he was after the manuscript I was hiding in the door of my jeep, safe and far away from everyone.

  “You would’ve had to have seen her with your own eyes to believe me, or to believe her,” I mentioned with more emphasis than I intended. “She’s barely a girl. And she was shaking from the cold, with her wet clothes clinging to her body. You can imagine.”

  “Is she beautiful, then?” he asked, turning his interrogative gaze to the clear sky.

  “Very.” I had to accept and say it at the same time. It was right at that moment, between the brink of acceptance and articulation, that I again experienced the first quiver of desire that had almost emerged that stormy night only to be consumed by something greater and more commanding: fear. I realized then that the woman had managed to remain in my house without initiating any sort of sexual contact with me. I retracted my statement once again: wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that the woman had remained in my house without having managed to initiate any sexual contact with me? As always, but especially in these two sentences, syntax did indeed affect meaning. I imagined then that maybe she had experienced that same throb in her lower belly that her appearance had provoked in me that stormy night. This idea filled me with pleasure, accentuating that which I felt from the smoke in my mouth, and I lingered over the miniscule details in my imagination. I picked up my pace and the Director, startled yet somber, kept up with me. The wind ruffled his hair and left a rosy tint on his cheeks. His tie flew up against his body and seemed to unite him with something superior or divine. The scene made me feel something I couldn’t help but label as tenderness, although I wasn’t sure if the vision had been the cause or if it was something else entirely.

  “Would you like to meet them?” I said, puffing on my cigar and watching him out of the corner of my eye. He smiled discreetly, though I’m sure he wanted to laugh, and he narrowed his eyes like a poker player intensely deliberating a risky bet. His reaction pleased me, so much so that I began to walk faster still, the Director following close behind. I was surprised at that moment: I was ready to participate in a party, an orgy, a parade, or a march against reality in favor of all its enemies. Within all the jubilation of that state, I realized—knowing he would fall in love with them instantly—I had asked the Director that question as someone hoping to turn everything into a gift.

  “Yes, I am interested in meeting them,” the General Director finally answered. “That way I can write a more detailed and complete report,” he rationalized, more to himself than to me, lowering his gaze and slowing our pace. We smoked a little while longer in silence, motionless on the sand. From the end of the blue sky, the mercurial light that had impacted me so severely hours before crept into view. I remembered Juan Escutia and saw the Director differently; I thought he was running a capricious and unnecessary risk. I imagined the words he would include in his report. I erased them. I inhaled smoke and exhaled it slowly.

  “You know, I’m sure, that this kind of long-term stay isn’t permitted,” he muttered in a low and embarrassed voice. “The costs. The reputation.”

  It seemed like he wanted to continue his list but was too tired. There was no reason for him to, as my contract was very clear in this aspect. The houses the hospital supplied to some of the workers, especially those in the medical profession, could only be inhabited by the principal resident’s family members. The hospital was invested in promoting a certain image of normalcy, something easily lost in a place like the one we worked in. Thus, the contract would never admit that the cohabitation of two young single women with a middle-aged and—more importantly—single doctor could be healthy or, at the very least, normal. From any perspective, the situation developing in my house was unacceptable.

  I was aware of these regulations when I’d invited the woman I would later discover to be only a false copy of a falsely silenced woman inside. And I was aware of them when the Betrayed had arrived and, clearly ill, installed herself in the upstairs bedroom, for a convalescence that was, in all honesty, quite suspicious in length. In effect, my lack of a reaction, my not doing anything, was not out of ignorance or simple stupidity, but rather a way of protesting the rules and appearances of normalcy so jealously guarded by all of us who lived together thanks to, or forced by, the death of others.

  I was tired. After almost a quarter century among the dead, I was spent. This realization unleashed a torrent of thoughts, momentarily reviving me, and I attempted to quickly walk away. But we were immobilized, our feet rooted in the sand. It was as if I’d just remembered, and though I tried again and again, I knew I could not move. I suppressed a nervous laugh of defeat. A flock of pelicans flew over our heads just as the Director and I simultaneously let out a burst of laughter. The echo mixed with the noise of the waves and the atrocious whispering of the wind: I would rather not describe what we saw next, although I will if they order me to. Abruptly, the birds disappeared into some unknown place in the sky.

  THE FIRST TIME A MAN MADE ME FEEL SUCH INTIMATE AND mixed emotions was many years ago. It happened during the early years of my adolescence, in that nebulous period when I had not yet acquired crystallized customs or meanings; that developmental phase in which one is forced to write the words I, man, and feeling in italics. It had nothing to do, then, with a man but with Someone, nothing more: Someone with blond curls cascading down their forehead, Someone with a wide mouth and turbid eyes, Someone with too much time on their hands.

  We walked a lot in those times. The paths took us to unknown places, usually in the country, where we would relax underneath tree branches in absolute silence. We would spontaneously roll around like beasts and then watch the clouds, identify birds with binoculars and a book of color photographs. Time would pass us by with its weary indifference, and we, captive to that humbling and relaxing silence, would let it go without paying much attention. I don’t know how long it all lasted. But just as I moved my feet, placing one in front of the other, trying to return to my house on the coast, I remembered how difficult the return was. The separation.

  Everything would start just before the beginning. When the shadows lengthened and the two of us sensed the day’s end—and, later, the beginning of that woman, the unknown night—the silence would shatter into tiny pieces. In those moments we talked incessantly, interrupting each other, without order,
without direction, without courtesy of any kind. We would bounce back and forth with an energy we had innocently ignored in the earlier hours, and, inside abandoned granaries or behind the coarse trunks of old trees, we surrendered ourselves to touching. Touching ourselves. Touching each other.

  Hurried and intense brushes, a proximity that, out of so much fear, smelled of sweat and adrenaline. Everything, however, would return to normal with a kiss. Usually it was just that: a kiss. One. Lips together. Saliva. Time turned flesh, color. A long kiss, like an expedition. After, just after that, the separation began. The beginning. This. This walk like someone wearing shackles around their ankles, this sensation of the body against air in an age-old battle, this weariness, this desolation. What do I know about the great wings of love? The pelicans appeared again almost overhead, but much higher. I paused to watch them for a couple of minutes. Silence. Air. Time. I imagined them fleeing from their own wings and, in that moment, I raised my fingertips to my lips, trying to detect the traces of something felt from far off in time. Yes, indeed, you turn back. And turning back achieves nothing.

  I WILL TRY TO TRANSCRIBE THE DIALOGUE THAT TOOK PLACE between the General Director, the False One, and the Betrayed as faithfully as possible. Knowing that, by necessity, because of inevitable human limitations, I will be unfaithful in the deepest sense of the word.

  The General Director arrived on time, as I had expected. Although he wasn’t wearing a tie, his body smelled of the warm, musky lotion that announced his presence in the halls of the poorly named Serenity Shores Sanatorium. His perfectly shined shoes and gray cashmere socks made his refined taste clear, but the crimson shirt he had chosen for the evening suggested that there were traces of his personality, of his taste, that I wouldn’t have predicted. Furthermore, he brought a bottle of whiskey and a flower pot in which a white orchid grew, solitary and proud. It was obvious he had a real desire to meet the False One, whom I had described as beautiful and vulnerable, and he was in pursuit of his prey, making a show of his abilities as a seducer. We all knew it from the start, and all of us, each in our own way, decided to act as if we hadn’t noticed.