The Awakening

by Allen Johnson

Diego looked left and right and saw the swinging doors that led to the emergency unit. He moved as quickly as he could in that direction, but Francisco cut him off and called for orderlies who immediately answered his call.

  “Escort these communists out of here.”

  Two burly men in hospital whites grabbed Diego by shoulder and elbow and forced the couple to the entrance. One orderly opened the door; the other gave Diego a shove in the middle of his back that sent him lurching forward. He lost his balance and fell to one knee, but still managed to cradle Lupe.

  His mind was muddled. “Darling, what do I do?”

  “We have to go back to the apartment,” Lupe said, barely able to vocalize the words.

  “Yes.” With his wife in his arms, Diego lumbered down the hospital steps and threaded his way from one street to the next. “God, give me strength.”

  Finally, in their apartment again, Diego laid his wife on the oak-framed bed. “I am going for help.”

  He ran down the stairs and hammered on one door and then the other. “Help me! Help me!”

  A woman with no evidence of upper teeth came to her door, took one look at Diego’s bloodstained hands and slammed the door shut. Diego ran back up the stairs to his wife.

  “We will have this baby ourselves. You can do it, sweetheart. You are strong.”

  “Bueno. All right, then.”

  Lupe had one contraction after the other; Diego lost count of how many. And with every contraction she seemed to get weaker. One hour slipped into the next and then the next. Between contractions, Diego patted his wife’s face with a wet compress, not knowing what else to do. He was panic-stricken; Lupe’s eyes vacillated between terror and total exhaustion.

  Finally, Diego cried out, “I can see the head. My, God, I can see the head. Just a little more, sweetheart.”

  Lupe screamed one last shattering cry, and the child was born.

  “It is a boy! Oh, my God, it is a boy!” He held the baby in his hands for Lupe to see, but her eyes looked nearly lifeless. Then, cradling the baby in his right arm, he sat down at his wife’s side.

  “We have a son, Lupe, a beautiful son,” he said, kissing her forehead.

  Lupe reached out and caressed her baby’s chest and stomach. Then, turning to Diego, she smiled and smoothed his unruly cowlick. “I love . . . I love that tuft of hair.” Slowly, her hand slipped to Diego’s face, his chest, and then to her side.

  Diego looked down at her and suddenly realized the light was gone from her eyes. He swept her up with his left arm and pressed her body against his chest. Like a prayer, he whispered into her ear, “Breathe, breathe,” but she did not move and then, in a slow revelation, he knew her spirit had vanished. He laid her down, fell across her body, and wept.

  They stayed that way for a long time: mother, father, and son. Then, as the shadows grew longer and darker in their little apartment, the baby cried, and Diego knew it was time. Forty days alone in a shed had taught him about endurance: There comes a time when the crying must stop, and the work must begin. It was now time.

  That first night, Diego sat beside Lupe, their baby in his arms, and spoke softly to his wife: “We will call him Juanito. He will be a great man, Lupe. He will have Juanito’s courage and your tenderness of heart.”

  On that darkest and most sorrowful of nights, Diego decided that he would never love another woman. In Lupe’s place he now had a son, and he would live for him. It was a cruel bargain, but even in his unspeakable grief, Diego could see that the child was beautiful: sturdy and handsome with the breath of Lupe’s spirit in his soul.

  Diego was numb, sleepwalking through the activities of the following days: the funeral, the feeding and bathing of Juanito, the preparations for his return home. But first, before leaving Granada, he had some unfinished business.

  In the two weeks that followed, Diego began rehearsing the job to be done in his mind’s eye. He trained for it. Every day, he pumped out a hundred pushups and two hundred situps at a time. Then, he would hang over the balcony ledge and chin himself—twenty, fifteen, ten repetitions in a set. He was getting stronger and stronger in body and mind. Finally, on the morning of the fourteenth day, he knew he was ready.

  Diego left baby Juanito in the care of a co-worker’s wife. Then, he walked directly to the hospital, through the front door and past the reception desk to his brother’s office.

  “You cannot go in there,” a nurse protested.

  Diego ignored her. He crashed into the office and found no one. He spun out of the room and pressed down on the nurse who pinned herself against a bank of file cabinets.

  “Where is he?” he asked, his voice so quietly and horribly seething that the nurse shook with fear.

  “He is not here.”

  “Where then?” Diego demanded, glowering over her.

  “At the cathedral. He must be at the cathedral.”

  Diego stormed out of the hospital and set out in the direction of the church. At the same moment, the nurse telephoned the police and reported the incident in detail.

  Diego climbed the steps of the church two at a time. As he walked into the sanctuary, he saw a squat, elderly woman enter a confessional. Moving quickly in that direction, he took a folding knife out of his pocket and opened the blade. At the confessional, he pulled back the heavy red cloth and faced his brother. Diego put his knee between the priest’s legs and his hand on his throat. He pulled back the knife, ready to plunge the blade into his heart.

  Diego’s face was stone cold. “You killed my wife,” he said, his voice trembling like a death rattle, “you self-righteous hypocrite.”

  An old woman pressed her nose against the confessional grill and emitted a crescendoing burst of staccato yelps: “Oh, oh, oh, oh.”

  “Shut up and say ten Hail Mary’s,” Diego barked.

  The old woman straightened up, shut her mouth, and showed the whites of her eyes. Then, the blood drained out of her head, and she slid down onto the floor of the confessional, her chin dropping to her chest and her legs sticking out from behind the curtain like a pair of grotesque link sausages.

  Diego tightened the grip around his brother’s neck.

  The priest was gasping. “Would your wife . . . want you . . . to kill me?”

  “Do not dare talk about my wife,” he said, his jaw twitching in fury.

  “God then . . . Is this God’s will?”

  Diego recoiled his arm and held fast, the knife quivering in his hand. “I do not know. Maybe you can ask him at your judgment.”

  Diego froze. A flood of images of Lupe flashed through his mind. He could see her smoothing his hair, swatting the olive branches, stirring the evening soup, sitting at the windowsill, the light on her beautiful face. He held his breath. Then, with lightening speed, he drove the blade past the priest’s head, just nicking his ear and sticking into the back wall of the confessional.

  “You are not worthy of bloodying my knife,” he said, releasing his grip from his brother’s throat.

  Diego stood over the priest, pulled the blade out of the wall, folded it, and crammed it into his pocket. When he left the confessional, he saw two policemen cautiously approaching him. He stood still a moment.

  Francisco lurched out of the confessional, massaging his throat, and seeing the policemen, pointed his finger at Diego and shouted hoarsely, “Arrest him!”

  The policemen dashed forward.

  Diego turned on this brother and snarled—the priest responding by blinking his eyes, drawing back his neck, and retreating into the red drapery.

  Diego leapt onto a pew, ran the full distance of the bench, and hurdled to the center aisle, overturning the pew in the process.

  “Stop!”

  Both policemen drew out their weapons and aimed.

  “No! Not in the house of God,” the priest shouted.

  The policemen shot a look of disdain at the priest, lowered their arms, and again broke into a sprint. It was too late. Diego had already escaped by a side door and was well
on his way into the labyrinth of the Albaicín.

  As Diego approached his apartment, he was confident that he had ditched the police and, not wanting to bring attention to himself, slowed down to a fast walk. He smiled, feeling cleansed by the ordeal. “It is always good to go to confession,” he said to himself.

  Before closing the door of the apartment for the last time, Diego completed one last task. He built a small recessed ledge above the cornice of the street door and on the ledge placed a vase with a single lily. When his work was done, he offered a final kiss from his lips to his fingers to the cornice. Then, with a suitcase in hand and little Juanito bundled in the crevice of his arm, he took the first step of his journey home to Espejo.

  DIEGO SIGHED AND FOLDED HIS hands in his lap. “And that is my story.”

  Miguel spoke quietly, as if in church. “Yes, Diego, that is a beautiful story. I am honored to hear it. But you still have not told us about the stranger.”

  “You want to know about the stranger?”

  Miguel mopped his face with his big hand.

  Diego turned to his granddaughter: “He wants to know about the stranger, Lupita.” Then returning to the police chief: “Why did you not tell me, Miguel?”

  Miguel’s feet started tapping.

  “Tell him about the stranger,” Lupita said, taking pity on Miguel.

  “Yes, of course. I was going to tell him. I do not know why he is always in such a big hurry. It is not good for a man to be so hurried all the time. It is bad for the heart. Do you not realize it is bad for the heart, Miguel?”

  “Yes, Diego,” the policeman said with slow exasperation.

  “Good. It is important that you know that. All right, where was I?”

  “The stranger, Tito.”

  “Yes, the stranger.” Diego rolled his shoulders, and his back crackled. “Did you hear that? It is a strange thing when you get old. Everything snaps and pops. It did not used to be like that. Now, when I pick up a toothbrush, my elbow sputters. Really. I do not think an elbow should sputter. I think it should bend; it should twist, but it should not sputter.”

  “Tito.”

  Diego smiled at his granddaughter. “Right. The stranger. Well, as you know, Lupita, September 8 is the anniversary of Lupe’s death. Every year on that date, I go back to Granada. I like the long drive; it gives me time to think about Lupe. And, when I arrive at our old apartment, I put a fresh white lily in the vase above the entry door. You know I do that?”

  “Yes, Tito.”

  “Did you know I do that, Miguel?”

  “I did not know that, Diego.”

  “Well, I do. But this year was different. This year, after replacing the flower, I started to walk back to my van. I park it on the sidewalk about a hundred meters from the apartment. It is illegal to do that, but I am an old man, and I do it anyway.” He squinted at the chief of police. “You are not going to arrest me, are you, Miguel?”

  Miguel did not bother to respond.

  “Well, anyway . . . where was I?”

  “You were parked illegally,” Miguel groaned.

  “Yes, I was parked illegally.” Diego shook his head. “In the name of heaven, why are you harping on that, Miguel?” Diego clucked his tongue. “It is such a little thing and has nothing to do with the story.”

  “Tito,” Lupita said, lengthening the word into a caution.

  “All right, all right. I was illegally parked, if you have to know, Miguel, and I was walking back to the van. Then I heard a scream.”

  “Was it a man’s scream?” Miguel asked.

  “Yes, it was a man’s scream. Why do you keep interrupting me, Miguel? You make me lose my place.”

  “I am sorry. You heard a man scream.”

  “Yes, that is what I said.” Diego took in a long breath. “It reminded me of Juanito. The Black Squad soldiers. The rifle butt. The execution. I froze that day, but never again. Never again, Lupita.”

  “Yes, Tito, I know.”

  “So, I ran back to the apartment, when I heard a second horrifying scream.” Diego turned to the police chief. “And, yes, Miguel, it was a man’s scream. Anyway, this time, I shouted, ‘¿Quien es? ¿Que Pasa?’”

  Diego sat back and looked out over the village. He was silent for a long moment.

  Miguel bid his time, chewing on his bottom lip.

  Then, as if an afterthought, Diego added: “I made my voice as big as possible, you know. I must have scared them, because when I entered the doorway, they were running down the hallway and out the back door.”

  “Did you get a good look at them?”

  “No, Miguel. It was dark. All I know is that there were two of them.”

  “How big were they? Were they Spanish, African, Arab?”

  “I just told you it was dark, Miguel. How am I supposed to know their ancestry? They did not stop for an interview. You heard me say it was dark?”

  “Yes, I heard that.”

  “Well, I was not sure. Sometimes I wonder about your hearing.”

  “Tito, finish the story.”

  “You see, Miguel? Now there is a woman who likes to hear a good story. All right. The stranger was my responsibility. Juanito was my responsibility too, but I let him down. I was not going to let this man down. I bent over him. He was bleeding from everywhere. In the dark, the wound that looked the most serious was his throat. I wrapped my bandanna around his neck—firm enough to stop the bleeding, but not so tight to choke him. I do not know if I did the right thing, Lupita.”

  “You did fine, Tito.”

  “Anyway, that is what I did. Then I ran back to the van and backed down the street. I lifted the man into the van—well, half-lifted, half-rolled. He was heavy, and I am not as strong as I used to be. Then, I drove as fast as I could back to Espejo—I probably broke the speed limit, Miguel—and you know the rest of the story.”

  Diego closed his eyes as though he were replaying the scene. All three were silent for a moment.

  Lupita thought about the first time she had heard her grandfather’s story. It was on the evening of her sixteenth birthday. In fact, it had served as a rite of passage. On that occasion, it was her father who shared the story, just two weeks before the fatal accident. She could still hear the rhythm of his voice, quietly unveiling the narrative like a tragic love ballad. It was one of her last treasured memories of her father.

  With Diego’s retelling of his story, Lupita felt, as always, proud to be the granddaughter of Diego Garcia and her namesake, Lupe. For her, it was a noble heritage—one that had driven her to become the best physician that her mind and spirit would allow.

  Diego continued to sit quietly with his eyes closed, and Miguel wondered if the old man had fallen asleep again.

  “And still, there is the mystery of the stranger in Lupita’s bed,” Miguel said.

  Diego opened his eyes and looked directly at Miguel. “There is no mystery. He is a man who needs our help.”

  “Agreed. But he is also a man with a history. He, too, has a family. And they must be worried about him.”

  That made good sense to Diego. “That is true, Miguel. What do you suggest?”

  This was the first time in Miguel’s memory that Diego had asked for his advice. It gave him a sense of satisfaction. He wanted Diego and, especially, Lupita to know that he was a professional. He rehearsed a carefully chosen question in his head before speaking. “Was there any identification on the man?”

  “We found nothing,” Lupita said. “We imagine that he was robbed of everything.”

  “That is likely,” Miguel said. “Either that or he is a derelict.”

  “I do not think so,” Lupita said.

  “Why not?”

  “Two things: his haircut and his shoes. His hair is precisely clipped, a two-thousand-pesetas haircut at least. And his shoes are very expensive; Italian leather, I think.”

  Miguel could not squelch a grimace. He felt a raw twist of irritation; Lupita’s detective work had crossed over into his do
main. “May I see his clothes?”

  “Of course.”

  Lupita led Miguel into the utility room. The stranger’s shoes, shirt, and pants were still in the sink, undisturbed from the night before.

  Miguel examined the loafers: brown suede and leather with wingtip detailing. Indeed, they looked like they could be Italian. Then Miguel noticed the inside label. It read:

  Shoes by Dominico

  Chicago, IL

  “The man is American,” Miguel said, visibly proud of his investigative prowess.

  “How do you know?” Lupita asked.

  “Look at the label,” Miguel said, showing Lupita the inside of the shoe. “Chicago. He is American.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Deductive reasoning.”

  “No, Miguel,” she said gently, “that is not deductive reasoning; that is inductive reasoning.”

  “What?” Miguel could feel his scalp start to itch.

  “In deductive reasoning, the premise guarantees the conclusion. That is not the case here. The Chicago label only supports the conclusion; it does not guarantee it; that is inductive reasoning.”

  If there was anything about Lupita that got under Miguel’s skin, it was her intelligence. He despised being out-maneuvered, particularly by a woman, and Lupita did it all the time—not because she was haughty, but because she was so darned smart.

  “So what are you saying?” Miguel asked.

  “I am saying that just because the label says ‘Chicago, Illinois’ does not mean that the man is from Chicago or even from the United States. He could just be a well-traveled businessman. You follow?”

  “Si, si, si. Of course. But it is a possibility. The man could be American.”

  “Yes, it is a possibility.”

  “Ah.” A small vestige of his pride recovered with that concession, Miguel returned quickly to the contents of the sink. He drew out a ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket, not because he was concerned about contaminating the evidence, but because he had seen the procedure a thousand times on television. He hooked the torn bloodstained shirt with the pen and lifted it straight up from the basin. Then, spotting the breast pocket of the garment, he nudged the pocket open with the tip of his finger.