by Steve Cash
“Sí, Luis, sí,” I answered, touching my heart.
He smiled, then turned and led me through his small home to a courtyard in the rear, which was larger in area than the house itself. White stucco walls enclosed the space on three sides. Inside the walls, several fully mature orange trees provided shade at all times of the day. Dozens of stone sculptures and pre-Columbian stone heads, some of them Olmec, were scattered throughout the courtyard. Luis led me to a few cane chairs covered with bright-colored cushions. The chairs were clustered around a long, low table made of oak slabs and in the middle of the table sat a solid stone ball, perfectly round and about a foot and a half in diameter. The ball was gray-black speckled granite and must have weighed two hundred pounds. It was slightly cracked and missing chunks of stone on one side. The surface had been ground, sanded smooth, and polished. The stone was old and had been worked by experts. There were strange markings carved at five intervals in a broken line around the ball. The ball was unique, I had never seen anything like it, but it was what covered the top that stunned me. A handprint, a small hand, wider than mine and with shorter fingers, but a child’s hand for certain, had been carved across the top of the ball. I glanced at Luis, then looked closer at the markings. Suddenly I recognized one of them. It was the symbol in Meq script for the word “is.” I had seen it in the Meq cave in Africa, in the center of an “X” that translated, “Where Time is under Water—Where Water is under Time.” The symbol appeared in the palm of the handprint and at all five intervals in the broken line around the ball. My heart jumped.
“Where did this come from, Luis?” I asked, then remembered he was mute and I didn’t know how to sign.
Luis motioned for me to wait where I was and turned to go inside. He was back within thirty seconds carrying an old photograph and a map of Cuba. He pointed to the photograph and put his finger on one of two boys who were standing on both sides of a man wearing a fishing hat and grinning ear to ear. They were standing on a pier with an enormous blue marlin hanging upside down behind them. The big fish must have been twelve feet long and weighed six hundred pounds. Luis touched the man’s face in the photograph, then touched his heart, and I knew the boys were Luis and Indio and the man was their father. Then Luis ran his finger along the entire southern coast and western tip of Cuba. He pointed at the stone ball, then the map, and then to his father, and I got my answer. Luis’s father had found or purchased the ball on the southern coast of Cuba when Luis was a boy. But I had many more questions and decided to wait for Carolina before I asked them.
Opari and Carolina were separated by over three thousand years in age, one being Meq and one being Giza, and yet I could tell the instant they returned that the walk along the beach had served its purpose. Carolina loved Owen in a different way than she had Nicholas, perhaps not as intensely, but just as deeply and for a much longer time. Opari helped Carolina cope with the suddenness of losing Owen, though she never mentioned him by name. She told me later they talked only of their sisters, Georgia and Deza, and how little time they had been allowed to spend with them, and how much they missed them still. There was sadness in Carolina’s eyes, but she seemed resigned to what had happened.
The three of us had a quiet conversation about informing Star and Jack in St. Louis and Willie Croft at Caitlin’s Ruby in Cornwall. We discussed whether to wait for a burial and Carolina made the decision there would be no funeral or formal service. We would bury Owen at Finca Maria ourselves, simply and privately, just as Owen preferred to live.
Indio was due back soon and Luis was waiting for us in the courtyard. I told Carolina and Opari I wanted them to see something and led them through the house and out to the long low table with the perfect granite sphere resting in the middle. Opari made her haunting trilling sound when I showed her the handprint on top of the ball. She ran her fingers slowly over the stone, marveling at the expertise of the workmanship and the smoothness of the surface. She commented on the age of the stone, wondering aloud how old it might be. “Old,” I told her, then I showed her the Meq word “is” among the strange markings at the intervals, and especially in the palm of the handprint.
Opari gasped. “Where did this ball come from, Z?”
“Right here. Right here in Cuba!”
“Where in Cuba? How does Luis come to have this?”
I turned to Carolina and looked in her eyes. “That’s what I’d like to find out,” I said. “If you’re up to it, Carolina, I could use your help with Luis. I need you to sign for me so I can ask him some questions.”
“This ball is important, isn’t it, Z?” Carolina asked.
“It could be, but if you don’t feel like it, I understand. We can always do it later.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, “let’s do it now. God knows Owen would.”
Indio returned two hours later and in that time we learned everything Luis knew about the stone ball. His father had discovered it while diving after a major hurricane passed over western Cuba and rearranged miles of coastline, exposing features previously unknown and unseen. The ball was on the floor of a cave nearly thirty-five feet below the surface. Luis said his father was able to dive and hold his breath for five minutes or more at a time. Even so, it took two men two days to get the ball into the boat. Luis said his father kept the location of the cave secret, not telling Indio or Luis where it was for fear that being young they might be tempted to tell someone. He said his father and the other man both died within the next few years before ever revealing the exact location. Luis only knew that it was somewhere from La Coloma west to Playa Maria La Gorda, or along the southern coast of Isla de Pinas. I asked Luis why keeping the location secret had been so important to his father and the other man. When Carolina told me what he said, I wasn’t expecting it. “The answer is why I live in La Coloma,” Luis signed, “and why I am also a diver and still search for this cave. My father said there were more stone balls in the cave. I want to find them.”
I glanced at Opari. A tiny window of curiosity opened in our minds that neither of us could close. “I’d like to come back sometime, Luis, maybe next year. You can teach me to dive. I’d like to help you look for that cave.”
Luis signed that we were welcome anytime and he would be glad to teach me to dive, although he wasn’t sure I could go that deep.
“You might be surprised,” I said.
We spent the night in La Coloma, then said farewell to Luis and started early for Finca Maria. It was a long, hot, and difficult journey. Carolina remained quiet along the way, while Opari and I kept our conversation limited. Finally, rising up into the hills above Vinales, the air became a little cooler and drier. Ciela was waiting for us. She gave Carolina a warm and silent embrace the moment she stepped from the car. Biscuit was absent, but Ciela said he had been informed.
Carolina filled the next day by driving with Indio to Pinar del Rio and taking care of legal matters. Owen Bramley’s casket arrived the following day in a separate vehicle driven by a mortician. He was resting inside a simple but elegant coffin of hardwood and brass. We buried him at sunset under a sky of pale gold with fiery layers of orange and red. The gravesite had a clear view of three massive mogotes in the distance. They looked like great elephants forever frozen in place, perhaps as sentries. Carolina said a prayer, one that she had composed herself, and Ciela said one in Spanish, crossing herself at least a dozen times. Not far away, the girls of Finca Maria each released a Chinese kite in his honor. Opari finished by singing a prayer in Meq, a droning lament, which allowed all of us to shed our tears. Then, with Indio’s help, we gently lowered Owen Bramley into the earth.
On our walk back to the house, Carolina turned to me and said, “Z, I’ve been thinking about something and yesterday in Pinar del Rio I finally said, ‘Why not?’”
“Why not what?” I asked.
“Why not stay here?”
I looked in her eyes. I had seen the same expression many times in her life, the first being when she told me she was g
oing to place a whorehouse in the most exclusive neighborhood in town.
“I’ve thought it through,” she said. “I could send for Star and Caine, they will love it here, and Jack can take care of the house. The work I’ve been doing here with Ciela is more important and rewarding than anything I could do in St. Louis.” She paused. “I need to get away from St. Louis for a while, Z.” She glanced at Opari. I could tell they had discussed this on their walk. “And you and Opari want to find Luis’s cave, don’t you?” She paused again. “Well, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Why wait for next year? Do it now. We will all go diving.”
I reached for Opari’s hand. “What do you think?”
Without hesitating, Opari said, “I believe it is an excellent plan, Carolina. I could not have thought of a better one myself.”
The decision had been made. Carolina telephoned St. Louis and relayed her plans to stay in Cuba and the reason why. The unexpected news about Owen shocked Jack, Star, and Caine, who had grown to be like a son to Owen. Jack understood and agreed to watch the house in St. Louis. After traveling by train to Miami, Star and Caine arrived at Finca Maria on the last day of December 1931. All the girls were bewitched by Caine, who was starting to enter puberty and acted embarrassed by the whistles from the girls and the teasing he received. But he didn’t run from the attention. Caine already possessed the dark good looks of his father. Star embraced the life at Finca Maria. She relished the food and slower pace of life and became close to all the girls. By February we had settled into a routine that we followed week after week, then month after month, and eventually year after year. While the rest of the world plunged deeper into the Great Depression, in western Cuba, little by little, we began our Great Obsession. Each Friday at noon, Carolina, Opari, Caine, and I loaded the DeSoto with supplies and Carolina drove from Finca Maria to La Coloma. We stayed in a bungalow Carolina purchased for almost nothing. It was close to Luis and near the marina where his boat was anchored. The bungalow was small and simple, and after Carolina had improved the wiring and plumbing, and redecorated, she named it “Pequeno Maria.” Every Saturday and Sunday, we sailed and explored with Luis, covering miles of coastline, sometimes fishing, but mostly diving, and always searching for the lost underwater cave with the stone spheres inside.
At first it was fun, a game, an adventure like treasure hunting. We had some difficulty finding equipment small enough for Opari and me to use, but once we did Carolina and Luis taught us all about rubber goggles, fins, and snorkeling, and Opari taught me a method of breath control she learned from Chinese pearl divers during the Ming Dynasty. Within weeks, Opari and I were able to dive with Luis, going down thirty to forty feet and staying down four to five minutes, while Carolina and Caine patrolled above in the boat. Luis called it “skin diving.” Opari and I fell in love with it. The more we did it, the more we wanted to do it, and the more I studied the stone ball in Luis’s house, the more I wanted to see the others. It was the same for Opari. Quickly, diving was no longer just “fun.” We became obsessed with finding the cave.
Luis’s father left behind a journal and several notebooks filled with detailed drawings of underwater landscapes and odd formations he had observed surrounding the cave. The problem was that all his notes pertaining to location were written in a personal code only he understood. Luis continued to use the notes as reference, but not for guidance. Instead, he carried out a systematic search based on grids he had drawn over nautical maps, coastal maps, and geological surveys. He was exploring each grid one at a time and there were hundreds remaining.
Usually, we drove back on Monday and our life at Finca Maria occupied our weekdays. However, during exceptionally good diving conditions Opari and I would stay through the week and continue diving with Luis until Carolina returned the following weekend. Many times early on, I thought we had found the cave or at least a landscape to match the drawings, but it was never the right one.
Our time at Pequeno Maria became completely isolated and we rarely talked of anything other than diving and the search. The area was extremely remote and the population sparse. At Finca Maria, though there were many of us living on the sprawling farm, the surrounding country was rural and news mainly concerned local events. Biscuit brought us baseball news when he visited and Indio kept us abreast of current events in Cuba, particularly the opposition to Gerardo Machado and his secret police, the “Porro.” Jack kept us informed about the world at large through long letters and telephone calls, which Carolina made from Pinar del Rio every week. On May 12, she spoke with Jack and learned that the kidnapped baby of Charles Lindbergh had been found dead. The sudden news saddened all of us and Carolina became depressed and melancholy for days. She said she missed planting flowers in spring and tending to her “Honeycircle,” and she missed Owen more than ever. Then she decided to plant a “Honeycircle” at Finca Maria in his honor. She placed honeysuckle bushes and wildflowers in a wide ring around his grave, and planted fragrant white mariposas throughout. Whenever she felt the need, she spent the whole day tending to the “Honeycircle.” It worked. She would always return with a smile, refreshed in mind and spirit.
Our life was basic, simple, and our routine changed little. Days were slow and full, yet time seemed not to exist. The days and months ran together like small streams into a river. In the evenings at Finca Maria, kitchen scents of cumin, sour oranges, onion, and garlic mingled with echoes of distant mockingbirds, and on weekends the scent of sea spray and salt. Four years slipped by and I barely took notice. Even though I was Meq and understood our unique perspective on Time, this “detached” feeling was brand-new to me, so I mentioned it to Opari. She told me not to worry. “It is common,” she said. “You are experiencing what the old ones learn to do gradually as segments of time become longer. I have felt two hundred years pass in the state of mind you are experiencing. It is said that before the Time of Ice, this state was given a name. It is called ‘denbora dantza egin,’ or ‘timedancing.’ You will come to know this delicate balance intuitively and how to extend it or contract it. You must learn this well, my love.”
I continued in the same exquisite balance and strange state of being here/not here for another year, learning the nuances and shadings, and learning how to “extend or contract” as Opari had said I would. There were odd “side effects,” which Opari said were normal. One I welcomed and one was a trade-off that frightened me. When I thought about Opari living in this state for two hundred years or more, I gained new respect for her and all the old ones. I welcomed the fact that while I was in this state I had not one thought or dream concerning the Fleur-du-Mal. He simply was not relevant. What frightened me was that I also began to lose my ability to feel beauty of any kind, in anything, from Opari’s beautiful face to pink and golden Cuban sunsets in the Vinales Valley. I saw the beauty in things, but I was unaffected, empty, and numb to it. Beauty, like the Fleurdu-Mal, was not relevant. I now knew old Meq had to endure long stretches of time without one of the true joys in life. There are many trade-offs in extreme longevity, but that was one bargain I wasn’t sure I could accept. I also realized I had no choice.
Only Opari knew of my curious state of mind. I showed no outward signs or symptoms and to others I seemed no different. I was able to watch Biscuit play baseball in crowded Havana ballparks or talk politics on the veranda at Finca Maria with Indio. I ate well, I laughed, and I explored. I welcomed Willie Croft, who came for a short visit in 1934 and decided to stay at the request of Star. Carolina even taught me the skill of signing, which enabled me to have endless conversations with Luis about the cave and the stone balls. We heard nothing from Sailor and Zeru-Meq, or Geaxi and Mowsel, and the Fleur-du-Mal was not only out of mind, he was out of sight, silent, and his presence was never felt. Then, in March 1937, I began to return to my normal state of mind. Each day felt as if I were walking through a large house from one small room to another. In weeks I was outside and in the open air. My mind was once again
clear and focused, and my love of Cuban sunsets returned, along with an active and palpable hatred for the Fleur-du-Mal.
On the last day of the month Opari and I went diving with Luis. The day was overcast and colder than usual. We were exploring a small rocky inlet near Cabo Corrientes. On our first dive of the day, Opari, who was not wearing her rubber fins, slashed her feet severely on a patch of coral none of us had seen. Blood streamed from the wounds and spread through the water around us. Luis and I each grabbed one of her hands and swam for the surface. Once we were on the boat he tried to clean the wounds, but she continued bleeding profusely. Each gash was a half inch to an inch deep. Opari remained conscious and calm. She said when she stepped on the coral it felt as though she had stepped on a bed of razor blades. Luis went to get fresh towels and bandages. When he returned, he dropped the bandages where he stood and stared at Opari and her feet. Her wounds had all closed and the bleeding had ceased completely. In minutes, several deep open cuts had become a few jagged red lines, which would also disappear within an hour and leave no scars or even a trace of one.
“What are you?” Luis signed. “You must tell me. This is magic I have witnessed—magic or a miracle!”
Opari spelled out the answer. “We are called the Meq.”
“What are the Meq?” he asked.
Opari glanced at me and smiled. “Dendantzi,” she said out loud, then signed “Timedancers.”
In early April, Jack arrived for a visit and a celebration of his birthday later in the month. He was going to be thirty-one years old and was now a well-respected reporter and correspondent whose columns covered everything from Dizzy Dean to Mohandas Gandhi. He resembled Nicholas more than ever. Before he said hello he handed me a letter from Geaxi. It had been sent from Malta and he received it a week earlier. I opened it immediately. It was a strange letter with only two enigmatic sentences, one in Basque and one in Phoenician. I could read the Basque, but Opari had to translate the Phoenician. The letter read: (Basque) “Have found something UNDERWATER—we are on our way to Pello’s.” (Phoenician) “Many Ports, One True Harbor.” Neither Opari nor I knew what she meant, but the word “underwater” intrigued me.
