by Steve Cash
“I wish I had another one of us with me,” I said. “Someone I trust completely.”
Almost at the same moment, before Opari could respond, I felt something—a presence, a Meq presence. I turned to look behind me and then heard the crack of a baseball being hit hard, and everyone around me leaped to their feet to follow the flight of the ball. I turned back to the field and saw the big, lanky left-hander, trotting around the bases, watching the ball sail out of the park over the fence in right field. Three runners crossed the plate ahead of him. The pitcher had hit a grand slam, the first one of his long career I was to find out later.
“Did you see that, Z?” Jack cried. “That ball went a mile!”
“Yeah, I did, Jack. Who is that player? What’s his name?”
“Babe Ruth,” Jack answered.
I looked at Opari to see if she had felt anything before the home run. She had, I could see it in her eyes. I started to excuse myself and motioned for Opari to follow me. I wanted to get higher up in the grandstands, where we could better scan the crowd. That’s when I heard the bitter laugh. Not the evil one I was all too familiar with, but another one, one I had not heard in years. It was coming from just behind me, two rows up. I turned again and found him immediately. He was standing on the steps in the aisle. His legs were spread wide and he had his hands on his hips. His eyes were a bright green. He wore baggy black trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He looked good, and healthy, and the only thing missing was his bowler hat, which was stored safely away in my closet at Carolina’s.
“How you doin’, Z?” he asked. “You’re lookin’ about the same.”
“How are you doing, Ray?” I said back. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“What do you think about that pitcher for the Sox?”
“I think he’s a pretty good hitter,” I said.
“Well, I think you’re right,” he said. “But right now all you’re seein’ is the caterpillar. Wait ’til you see the butterfly.”
3. Txapel (Beret)
A man on a train once told me the tale of a chieftain who was far from home on a perilous mission for his tribe. He came to a pass in the mountains with which he was unfamiliar. He knew there was no going back and his time was limited. False routes with bandits waiting in ambush lay ahead. Sitting on opposite sides of the trail at the head of the pass were two men about the same age. Physically, there seemed to be no difference between them, except that one was wearing a beret and the other was not. Both claimed to know the true and only safe way through the pass. The chieftain knew if he chose the wrong guide, his mission would certainly fail and he would likely be robbed, beaten, or killed. Not a single soul from his tribe would ever learn his fate. To the chieftain, there was but one choice. Laughing out loud, and without hesitation, he chose the man in the beret to be his guide. Why? Simply because a man with a beret will always have more to offer than a man without. If the “truth” is unknowable, he believed, then one should enjoy the journey, regardless of the outcome.
“What became of the chieftain?” I asked.
The man on the train turned his head toward the window and gazed out at the passing fields and farms. “No one knows,” he said quietly.
Ray Ytuarte is a survivor. He never thinks of his present situation as dire, only urgent. That is the difference between those who go under in a flood of circumstance and those who find their way to shore, any shore, and survive. True survivors never look back, except to remember what not to do again, and they rarely look ahead because the future is merely a dream, a trick of the mind. They exist squarely in the present, usually with good humor and always with no illusions. And they make excellent friends.
I overheard a woman say once: “Friendship is the work of childhood.” I suppose that’s about as true a thing as anything there is. In Africa I had witnessed how effortless that work becomes, in the heart, in the moment when Ray saved my life, putting his own life in harm’s way without a thought and delighting in it.
Ray and I embraced each other while the crowd was still standing and marveling at the distance of Babe Ruth’s grand slam.
“Damn, Z,” Ray said, “are you tryin’ to break my ribs?”
I laughed and let go of him, but I could easily have broken something without much effort. It felt that good to see him in flesh and blood. Opari was staring at both of us. So were Carolina and Jack.
It was because the Meq remain unmarked, or changed in any way, that it was impossible to tell what Ray had been through. He looked the same. I wanted to know everything that had happened to him since Africa. I wanted to know right there in Sportsman’s Park, but I also knew I would have to wait.
Carolina touched Ray’s shoulder and he looked up at her. “Good to see you, Ray,” she said, “we’ve missed you terribly.”
“It’s good to be back,” Ray said. “It surely is.”
I started to introduce Opari when Jack suddenly pulled on my sleeve. “How many more are there, Z?”
“More what, Jack?”
He hesitated, glanced at his mother, and turned back to me. “Well, you know, Z…how many more like you?”
Carolina seemed embarrassed, then looked at me and shrugged. Questions about the Meq almost never surfaced when we were together. I assumed we were simply a fact of life. I didn’t quite know what to say.
Then with a grin and a mysterious wink in my direction, Ray answered, “More than you think, kid…more than you think.”
As I introduced Ray to Jack, and finally to Opari, I heard the words being exchanged between them and watched their faces laughing and smiling, but I seemed to be somewhere else. I had an odd feeling, a dreamlike feeling I had experienced once before when Solomon reappeared after years of absence. I even heard the sound of a dog barking in the distance. Was it really Ray standing next to me speaking? I didn’t fully realize until that moment how much I had truly missed my old friend.
“Why now, Ray? Why here?” I asked him.
“Well…‘here’ because I stopped off at Carolina’s first. I found out a few things from Owen, you know, about everything from Eder and Nicholas to that nasty business down at the train station. Even saw Star and the baby…man, oh, man, Z…you did it, you really did it. Then I thought I had better come on down directly, and here I am.”
“How long have you been in the States?”
“That’s the ‘now’ part of the answer. About two months ago, I hitched up as a batboy with a Venezuelan exhibition team while they were in Veracruz. That got me into the States through Miami. A couple days later I felt a kind of storm, but different…strange…in the direction of St. Louis. By the time I got a little closer, maybe five hundred miles or so, I knew it was something else.”
He stopped talking and looked at me closely, like a doctor examining his patient, then he grinned and tapped me in the middle of my forehead with the end of his finger. He said, “I think all it was, was you worrying, Z. So, as long as I was already in the area, I thought I might as well save your ass…again.”
“When are you going to tell me where you’ve been?”
“When we get gone.”
“Gone where?”
“To do this thing. Owen told me, remember? You might need some help with Unai and Usoa and the trip back to Spain, to the Pyrenees. You ought to know by now two brains are better than one.”
I stared at Ray and smiled. I couldn’t wait to see him in his bowler again. “How was it?” I asked. “I mean, over all, how was it…because you look good, Ray.”
“Well, let me just say I learned a few things, and I also didn’t see a few things coming, like Mozart, for example.”
“Mozart? The composer?”
“Yeah, same guy. I tell you, Z, I really came to love his music. Never expected that. And I like a little modern painting now and then, know what I mean, Z?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. What could Ray, Mozart, and modern painting possibly have in common? “No, Ray, I haven’t got a
clue, but I can’t wait for you to tell me.”
“Ready to go?” It was Carolina. The game was over and the Browns had lost. Babe Ruth got the win for the Red Sox.
“Yeah,” Ray yelled back. “We’re ready. Ain’t we, Z?”
“We’re ready.”
As soon as we left Sportsman’s Park, Ray began peppering me with questions concerning Nova. I told him everything I knew about her current location, but he wanted to know more than her address and state of welfare. For some reason he never seemed to doubt that she was all right; he wanted to know what she was like, how she “turned out.” I told him about the night Eder died, and how Nova carried a Stone now, Unai’s Stone, which Sailor had thrown to her in the shadow of the “slabs” in Cornwall. I told him that Nova worried about him and added that I thought she missed him a great deal. I didn’t tell him Sailor had asked Geaxi and Opari to follow Nova’s progress and be patient. I didn’t mention her unique dress and heavy makeup, let alone her occasionally strange behavior.
“That don’t sound right,” Ray said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, knowing I’d been caught. I should have realized Ray was much too streetwise to ever swallow only half the truth.
“It just don’t sound like Nova,” he said. “You sure you’re not leavin’ something out?”
So I told him about the Egyptian mascara, the semitrances, and an attitude that I admitted I never quite understood.
“Now that’s my Nova!” Ray almost shouted. He leaned over and tapped me lightly on the temple. “What’s the matter with you, Z? How long you think I been gone?”
Then something happened that made me even more concerned about leaving St. Louis at that point in time. It took place not five minutes after we returned to Carolina’s and it involved Ray and the orphan boy. No one saw it coming. The boy was still healing from the traumatic events on the train and we should have seen the possibility, but as I said, it was unintentional. Nevertheless, because of it the boy confirmed a suspicion about Unai and Usoa’s killer that he could not have revealed in any other way.
Carolina had given the boy a name since there was no official name available. She called him Oliver Bookbinder—Oliver because she said he “looked straight out of Dickens” and Bookbinder for the Reverend who sent the two-year-old the boy had tried to save. The boy was dark and Hispanic in appearance and I thought he might someday have a few questions for Carolina about her choice of names. She told Ray no one was calling him Oliver because Ciela had nicknamed him Biscuit for the biscuit in a handkerchief that the boy would barely take out of his mouth when we first brought him home. He had already won everyone’s heart, especially Ciela’s, and Carolina thought Ray should meet him right away.
She led us to the kitchen where the boy sat with Ciela at the long table. They were playing checkers, sort of. The boy had captured nearly all of Ciela’s pieces. She had only two pieces left on the board. He was sitting with his back to us, but once he heard us, he spun around and found himself face-to-face with Ray.
He stared into Ray’s green eyes for only a second, then started trembling head to foot, and finally he fell to the floor, dragging the checkerboard down with him. The checkers went flying and scattered across the kitchen. He rolled under the table and curled up in a fetal position, trying to cover his head with the checkerboard. He was still shaking all over.
Ray immediately leaned over and spoke softly to him. “It’s all right, kid. I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.”
But it was no use. Ciela knelt down next to Ray and motioned with her head for him to leave, then turned and waved her arm for all of us to leave. “Go,” she whispered. “Vamos! I will take care of this.”
We left the room as quickly and silently as we could. Carolina was extremely upset and so was Ray. He felt like he had been responsible and apologized over and over, to Carolina, to me, to anyone who would listen.
“It’s not you, Ray,” I said.
“Then what is it?” he asked.
I hesitated and glanced at Opari, who had remained mostly quiet but was observing everything carefully. The boy had never exhibited any fear of the rest of us.
“What, Z? What is it?” Ray asked again.
“Not what, Ray. It’s who. It’s someone who looks very much like you.”
“The Fleur-du-Mal,” Ray said, more as statement than question. I never had to answer. “He’s a son of a bitch, that one,” Ray said to no one in particular, “a real live son of a bitch.”
An hour later Ciela had calmed the boy enough to where he fell asleep on the bed in her bedroom. Carolina told us he was breathing evenly and she tried to assure Ray that the boy would be fine. Ray did not forget the incident soon, however. Things like that affect him deeply, much more than he ever lets anyone know, and he carried the boy’s terrified reaction with him for weeks, though the boy himself forgot about it and even became Ray’s friend within days. Upstairs, I tried to bolster Ray’s spirit. I took him to my closet where I kept his oldest possession, his bowler hat.
He smiled once as he rubbed the brim, then placed it carefully on his head. “Kept it all the way through Africa, did you, Z?”
I smiled back. “Sure did.”
The next day I contacted Mitch and told him of our plan. I asked if he could accompany an old friend and me as far as New York. From there, the “white rose” would be our escort. He agreed on the spot, saying he needed the trip anyway for “business reasons.” At the same time, Owen Bramley was busy making all the arrangements for the entire journey. As we were going over the names of various emergency contacts, something suddenly occurred to me, something that would have been very important to Unai. I asked Owen if he had remembered Unai’s beret. “You bet, Z,” Owen said. “I wouldn’t forget that. It’s in there with him.”
I also sent Arrosa a telegram informing her of our scheduled arrival in New York and told her to contact Kepa in Spain, asking him to have someone meet us in Barcelona, where we would disembark. Arrosa still did not know the details of Unai’s and Usoa’s deaths. In my previous telegram I had only told her they had died. I knew she would be heartbroken with the news and I wanted to wait and tell her the rest in New York.
Ray spent most of the day getting to know Star and playing with Caine. All babies seemed to love Ray, and even though he would deny it, Ray loved all babies. Willie was enthralled with Ray, having never met any Meq quite like him. Jack had the same reaction and stayed home from school just to talk to Ray. Carolina did not object and kept herself occupied reading stories to Biscuit, which she said he enjoyed more than anything. Ciela remained in the kitchen, chopping, slicing, and singing, preparing a delicious Cuban feast in honor of our departure.
Every minute of every hour that day, Opari was by my side. She had a reserve and quietness about her that was different and mysterious. She even wore a garment I had not seen before, a deep blue Indian sari, exquisitely embroidered with mythological beasts and birds. There were ancient Meq barrettes in her hair similar to the ones Eder had shown me years earlier. And there was a faint scent of lavender on her skin, a scent I also had never known her to wear. Everything about her struck me as exotic and intoxicating. It was difficult for me to concentrate when I talked to Owen and the others.
Late in the afternoon the two of us finally found ourselves alone. We walked out to the “Honeycircle” at my suggestion. The sky was blue and clear and everything inside the lush circle was in bloom. We were holding hands and I lifted her hand to kiss her fingers and palm, then I kissed her lips. She let go my hand and put her arms around my neck. I kissed her cheeks and tasted lavender. I kissed her eyelids, then her eyebrows. They were soft black silk.
“We have not yet discussed the Wait, the Itxaron,” I said.
“Yes, my love, I know.” She put her hand on my chest and placed my hand on her chest, pushing aside the Stone she wore on a simple necklace. “Do you feel this pounding in our hearts?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“This is the essence, Zianno. This is the true meaning and dream of the Itxaron—not longing or waiting or wondering, but knowing. We are knowing our own destiny, my love. You, Zianno Zezen, are my destiny, flesh and blood, and I am yours. All else is unknown, unknowable, no longer…garrantzitsu. All else is no longer of importance, not to us and not to this pounding in our hearts. The Wait is not our enemy. The Wait is a gift from the stars.” She paused and kissed my lips. “Do you know what my name means in Basque?” she asked, then answered before I could respond. “It means ‘gift.’ I have a gift that others before me, others who wore the Stone of Blood, also possessed. Tonight I give this gift to you, my beloved. Just as you have let me into your dreams from half a world away, I will take you into mine. Tomorrow, when you leave me, you will know this gift and you will take it with you in your mind and heart. It will sustain you on your journey and bring you back to me. Not all Meq know of this gift, but tomorrow, you will, Zianno.”
“What is the gift?”
She pressed her finger to my lips and smiled. “Tonight, my love.”
Carolina decided against using her formal dining area for Ciela’s feast. Instead, shortly after sunset, we were all called into the kitchen and, one by one, took our seats around the long table. Wonderful Caribbean scents and aromas filled the room—grilled meat, roasted peppers, toasted marjoram, and more, wafting from a half-dozen side dishes laid out on counters and atop the stove. Inside the oven, Ciela said, was a suckling pig, cooked from a recipe as old as her village, and served with a “mojo” prepared with lard, cloves of garlic, and sour orange rind. At both ends of the table several bottles of champagne were chilling on ice. Owen said each bottle was a 1911 Perrier-Jouet, one of the finest vintages of any champagne since 1874.
Ray took one look at the array of delicious, steaming dishes and fresh-baked bread that covered the table, then summed up everyone’s reaction. “Damn!” he said, looking over at Ciela with a broad grin across his face.
