by Tom Epperson
“Probably. What are you referring to?”
“Supposedly you have a closet just for your boots. Dozens and dozens of pairs of boots.”
“That’s absolutely true. It’s such a sight I usually charge admission, but I’ll let you see it for free.”
“Some other time. I should go.”
“Why don’t you stay awhile? We can both get drunk and I’ll fix you dinner.”
“No thanks. I’m not hungry.”
He finishes off his wine and stands up.
“Thanks for taking the rabbit.”
“I’m happy to, Roberto. Don’t worry, I’ll find him a good home.”
* * *
Although he did not get a speck of it on him he feels somehow as if he’s covered with blood, and when he gets home he takes a shower and lingers in it for a long time. As he washes himself he feels the St. Jude Thaddeus medal that Mrs. Langenberg gave him around his neck; he doesn’t believe in its alleged protective power but still he finds something comforting in the presence of it on his person. He knows one thing: he cannot wait to get out of this nightmare of a country.
He towels himself dry and puts on his Nike tracksuit and pours himself a glass of wine. He was supposed to Skype Caroline tonight but he emails her that he’s been busy packing all day and he’s worn out and is going to bed early. He gets a prompt reply wishing him the best of nights and the sweetest of dreams, and it hardly seems possible he will soon be holding her in his arms, inhaling her scent and losing himself in her luminous eyes.
He turns the TV on to watch the news. The National Police, in a joint operation with the U.S. Navy, have captured two and a half tons of cocaine from a boat in the Caribbean Sea off San Felipe. Pop diva Shanterelle is expecting a baby with her boyfriend, Spanish soccer star Jaime Escalante. Police report a troubling increase in so-called “strangle muggings,” which involve tourists being victimized by muggers who strangle them till they pass out then take off with their stuff. No mention by the handsome and beautiful newspeople of what happened at Manuel’s house; it’s not news to Roberto that the violent death of the poor in this city is not news.
He goes to bed. He closes his eyes and tries to think of nothing but is instead sucked again and again into a vile vortex of butchery and blood, of terror and screaming, of the crucifixion of the innocent. And then finally he falls asleep.
He finds himself in a death bar. Also there is Edgar Leonidas, his friend from school. He and Edgar are stripped to the waist and armed with knives. They’re fighting each other. They both are bleeding and sweat is pouring off them as onlookers yell and make bets. And then he wakes up.
He’s sweating, as in the dream; it seemed so real it’s almost a wonder he’s not bleeding too. He casts the bedclothes off, lies on his back naked in the dark.
It is disconcerting how he keeps dreaming about the dead.
Six days until the day Roberto is to die
What he remembers most about what he was told about the massacre in Contamana is the silence. All the inhabitants of the town except a handful who managed to hide or run away were herded into the central plaza. Contamana is to the northeast, where it’s hot and steamy, and palm trees surrounded the plaza; survivors remembered how unusually still the air was and how the fronds of the palms didn’t move at all, as if they were frozen in fear, just like the people were.
The intruders were wearing green uniforms and green ski masks. They had a list of names on a notebook computer; the first name to be called out belonged to the mayor. The mayor had a little dog that went with him everywhere, and it trotted out with him as he walked toward the silent staring men in the green uniforms, and the mayor commanded his dog to run away but it didn’t so it was shot along with the mayor. Over the next quarter of an hour or so thirty-two people one by one were made to kneel and then shot in the back of the head. None of the victims either begged for their life or shouted out defiantly “Long live Contamana!” but they all went to their deaths without a word, and one might think that the people watching would be moaning and crying and whimpering in grief and terror but all of the survivors said there was absolute silence on the plaza, even the birds didn’t chirp and the insects didn’t buzz.
The killers did not explain themselves nor did they wear any identifying insignia on their uniforms so who they were was in dispute. But since most of the dead seemed to fall into categories deemed to be socially undesirable by the extreme right wing, like liberal politicians, schoolteachers with “modern” ideas, labor leaders, drunks, thieves, prostitutes, the physically or mentally handicapped (they shot one poor wretch of a teenage boy with cerebral palsy), it seemed reasonable to assume they were with the Army or the paramilitaries—unless of course they were a bunch of tricky insurgents who wanted the right wing to get the blame so the people would be driven into their Marxist arms.
When Roberto wrote about the massacre in The Hour five years ago, he still didn’t know who the men in the green uniforms were, but he’s made several trips to Contamana since then and has figured it all out, at least to his own satisfaction: the murders were committed by members of a paramilitary organization called An Eye for an Eye, hired by local landowners to teach the leftist town a lesson. He’s had the idea of writing a book, he even has a title: A Town Called Contamana. He’s sitting now on the floor of his apartment looking through three cardboard boxes filled with material he’s collected about the unfortunate town. He hasn’t begun the book for a couple of reasons: he’s never written a book and doesn’t really know if he can and since he’s already acquired more than enough enemies, he hasn’t been eager to antagonize An Eye for an Eye, a group that has a reputation for extreme ruthlessness, as the name they have chosen for themselves suggests. But he realizes this would be a perfect project for Saint Lucia. Everything he needs to write the book is in these boxes. He can see himself sitting in his office at his Victorian walnut desk, pouring over photographs and notebooks and transcripts and reports, in front of the wide window filled with ocean and sky . . . one of Caroline’s fat cats wandering in every now and then to bother him . . . Caroline herself coming in with a fresh cup of coffee for him and a kiss on his cheek and a How is it going, Roberto, I can’t wait to read the new pages—
The phone rings. It’s Beto from the lobby, announcing a visitor.
Roberto’s surprised. He tells Beto to send her up.
* * *
Clara enters in a swirl of perfume, and the air in the room seems instantly to get a degree or two warmer.
“I hope I’m not bothering you,” she says.
“No, of course not.”
“I was in the neighborhood, running an errand, and, you know, everything seemed so rushed and sudden Saturday night, I didn’t feel we had the chance to say a proper good-bye. How’s the packing going?” she asks, looking at the boxes and books and piles of clothes cluttering the floor.
“Okay. I’m trying to throw away as much as I can, but I seem to find a reason to keep just about everything.”
She’s dressed stylishly, as always. A tight beige jersey top with a plunging V neck. A thin wool beige wrap skirt. Matching high heels. Slung insouciantly over her shoulder, a light jacket in the same material as the skirt. Roberto moves with her into the room.
“It’s such a charming place,” she says. “I know you’ll miss it.”
“Can I get you anything? A cup of coffee?”
“No, I’m fine, thanks.”
“Sit down.”
She sits down on the couch. He sits in an armchair. She crosses her legs so the wrap skirt separates and her legs are displayed in a splendid fashion.
“You look tired,” she says.
“I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, you know . . . everything.”
She regards him in silence. She wears her short dark hair in such a way that a wave of it is always threatening to fall across her right eye, and now she pushes it back with her fingers, continuing t
o look at him.
“What?” Roberto says.
“I was just thinking . . . how selfish I am.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I realize I’ve been thinking of this as something that’s happening to me. You’re going away, so I’m losing such a good friend and the only one who understands me and so forth, but it’s not happening to me, it’s happening to you.”
“It’s happening to all of us. How’s my father?”
“He’s upset, Roberto. Even though he’s pretending to be the battleship. He says you’re having lunch with him tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. You need some time . . . just the two of you.”
“So I don’t think I ever really thanked you for dinner Saturday night. The food, the wine, the conversation . . . everything was wonderful.”
Clara’s face lights up. “Yes, it was fun, wasn’t it? So let’s gossip, Roberto, what did you think of everyone?”
“Well, I still liked Pombo. I still disliked Valdivieso.”
“And what about his boyfriend, Mr. My Cousin Eva?”
“I think he and Valdivieso make a good couple.”
“Yes, he seemed very full of himself, didn’t he, considering he’s such a bad actor. And I don’t think he’s even attractive, he’s far too pretty for a man.”
“You haven’t been hearing a disembodied voice singing opera by any chance, have you?”
Clara laughs. “No, why?”
“The woman sitting next to me, Patricia . . . she said her house is haunted by a ghost that sings opera and that it followed her to your apartment. But I guess the ghost must have gone back home with her.”
Clara’s smile fades. “Poor Patricia. She’s one of my oldest friends. She suffered a terrible tragedy two years ago. Her husband and their daughter took a trip to the Amazon, she was supposed to go with them but something came up at work. They were in a small private plane that went down in a thunderstorm while it was flying over the jungle. They didn’t find the bodies for weeks. I don’t think she’s ever really accepted it. She never talks about it, I’ve never seen her cry. But ever since it happened, she’s been having strange experiences. One week she’ll see a gigantic flying saucer floating over the city and then disappearing over Mount Cabanacande. And then the next week she’ll look into a mirror and see not her own face but the face of an ancient Egyptian princess who she somehow knows was herself in a previous life. And so on.”
“I’m sorry, Clara. I didn’t intend to make fun of her.”
“Oh, I know. Does that offer of a cup of coffee still stand?”
He goes in the kitchen, pours cups of coffee for himself and her. Ever since she walked through the door, his dick has been tingling. He wonders why she’s here. His first thought when he heard she was in the lobby was that she had come to seduce him, but was that just his imagination running wild? She’s an inveterate flirt but that doesn’t mean she wants to sleep with her own stepson.
He goes back to Clara, a cup of coffee in each hand. Finds her sitting on the floor next to a box of old photographs. She holds one up.
“Roberto, is that you?”
He looks at a chubby little boy in blue shorts and a red shirt on a tricycle.
“Yes.”
“Oh, you were adorable. Look at those fat little cheeks!”
He hands the coffee down to her.
“Thank you,” she says, smiling up at him, then returning her attention to the pictures in the box.
His gaze moves over her long, elegantly folded legs. Dives down into the V neck of her jersey top. Lingers on a faint freckle on the upper slope of her right breast.
“Who’s this stern gentleman?” Clara asks, holding up another photo.
It seems awkward to keep standing, so he sits down on the floor cross-legged. He takes a drink of his coffee as he looks at the picture. It shows an unsmiling, gaunt-faced man with a pointy beard sitting on a stone bench. He’s wearing a light-colored suit with a flower in the lapel and is resting both hands on the top of a cane. Near him, in a splash of sunlight, sits a cat, caught in the act of licking its paw.
“That’s my great uncle Adrián. He was my mother’s mother’s brother. He’s sitting in front of the hotel he owned in Puerto Alegria. It’s not there anymore, it was destroyed in a hurricane.”
“Do you remember him?”
“No, he died long before I was born. When my mother was a little girl. She said he never smiled but he had a very dry sense of humor and he was always making people laugh,” and then he adds, “I think that’s the famous cat.”
“Why ‘famous’?”
“During the Killing Time, Puerto Alegria was strategically important because it was located where the Mavaca River emptied into the sea. It was a liberal town, and it was taken over by a unit of conservative militia. Uncle Adrián and all the other important men of the town were imprisoned in the hotel. Have you ever heard of the parrot’s perch?”
Clara shakes her head.
“It’s a torture method. The victim’s stripped naked and his hands and his feet are tied together and then he’s suspended from a horizontal pole. He’s left hanging for hours or days without any food or water. Well, that’s what was done to Uncle Adrián and the other men. They eventually would have ended up in front of a firing squad, but then they had a great stroke of luck.
“Hurricanes of course are very rare in this country, but it just so happened a hurricane chose that time to hit the coast. The hotel was right on the beach. The conservative militia came from the interior of the country, and most of them had never even seen the sea. When the wind started blowing over trees, and they saw big waves crashing against the beach, they were terrified, and they jumped in their trucks and fled Puerto Alegria. They left my uncle and the others still dangling naked from poles in the hotel. The windows were blowing out, and the lobby was beginning to flood. But some townspeople came and rescued them just in time. They all made it to higher ground and were safe. And everyone praised God for having sent the hurricane to save them, as if God takes sides in a civil war.”
“Okay,” says Clara. “But why was the cat famous?”
“After Uncle Adrián escaped the hotel, he remembered that he’d forgotten his beloved cat, so he went back for it. Unfortunately, my uncle was drowned. They found his body in what was left of the hotel the next day.”
“Oh,” says Clara—clearly not expecting the story to end in this way. She sips her coffee, and takes another look at the photograph. “So what happened to the cat?”
“It was fine. It turned up a day or two later. It must have climbed up a tree or something.” He looks back at the box. “Mother gave me these pictures. Right before she left for Spain. She said I spent too much time in the present, and I should start paying attention to the past, because the past is the country all of us come from. But this is the first time I’ve looked at them.”
Clara picks up some more photographs, as Roberto examines the one of Uncle Adrián. He’s struck by how fiercely and directly he’s gazing at the camera, as if he’s trying to look through the years right at Roberto. It’s like he’s saying, Yes, I was here, on this day, sitting on this bench, and I was just as alive as you are, oh you wouldn’t believe how alive I was!
“Here’s one of you and Clemente,” Clara says. “What happened to your arm?”
Roberto’s nine. He’s standing with his father on the veranda of the house he grew up in. Behind him on the wall is the many-colored peacock sculpture that he remembers always being there. He wonders what happened to it. Is it still hanging on a wall somewhere, or did it end up broken to bits in some rubbish heap? His father’s hand is on Roberto’s shoulder. He’s looking down at him and smiling, Roberto’s smiling at the camera. His left arm is in a cast.
“I was at Andrés’s house. He had a eucalyptus tree in his back yard. We were climbing around in it and I fell out and broke my arm. It actually didn’t heal very well. This arm’s a little short
er and you can still feel a bump on the bone.”
“Where?” says Clara.
“Right here,” he says, touching a spot on his forearm.
Clara touches the same spot. “Oh yes, I can feel it.”
But her hand stays on his arm. Rubbing it a little. He looks up into her eyes, and she glances at his lips.
He knows that she is his for the taking, that he can be inside her in seconds if he wishes, fucking her on Caroline’s organic moso bamboo floor.
“Clara,” he says. “This is not a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Obvious reasons. My father . . . Caroline . . .”
They both are talking very softly, as if his father and Caroline might be in the hallway just outside the door.
“They’ll never know,” says Clara.
“But we will.”
“So?”
“I thought you said you loved him.”
“I do. This has nothing to do with him. Or Caroline. It has to do with you and me. You’ve always wanted me, don’t lie to me, and I’ve always wanted you.”
“But it wouldn’t be right—”
“Oh Roberto,” Clara sighs, reaching out and touching his hair. “Life is so full of pain and trouble, and if we have a chance to be happy for an hour or two why not take it? We wouldn’t be hurting anybody. And this might be our last chance, who knows if we’ll ever even see each other again?”
“Why would you say that? We’ll see each other again.”
“Kiss me.”
“Clara—”
“Stop talking.”
She moves toward him and he knows if they kiss they’ll be utterly lost in each other’s ecstatic flesh and however much he wants exactly that he makes himself stand up.
“I’m sorry, Clara.”
Clara looks up at Roberto. Not happily. Pushing that bewitching wave of hair away from her right eye. Now she starts to stand up too; he offers her his hand but she ignores it.
“You’re a fool,” she says. “All men are fools about sex. In one way or another.”
