Hot Sur

by Laura Restrepo

  Ian Rose couldn’t help but regard his son with a contained admiration that came from the realization that the boy, his only son, was turning into an outstanding man. As for Cleve, when he felt suffocated by the paternal presence, he escaped to New York City, less than three hours away by motorcycle, and stayed in the studio he rented in the East Village near St. Mark’s Place, returning to the mountain house only when he started to miss the bustle of the dogs and the silence of the woods, and the company of that father he was just getting to know. So they adapted to each other’s company without much ado and largely in silence, confident that their communication would improve in time.

  Consequently, they had exchanged few words that night, which had turned surreal by the savagery of the afternoon. Father, son, and dogs gathered in a tight semicircle in front of the blazing fireplace, while at their backs, the windows that faced the woods imposed a blackness that seemed absolute.

  “Perhaps we should put up curtains,” Rose the father said, measuring his words so as not to admit to his son the feeling that what had happened would somehow rupture the equilibrium, damaging the previous order.

  He didn’t know how to express it in words; it was just a premonition. He had not been a friend of Mr. Eagles; his relationship with the deceased had been limited to greeting him when he delivered the cartons of dog food, paying him, and chatting about a few trivial matters and nothing else. Nevertheless, he felt that the murder had torn the delicate fabric of a natural law that for years had remained intact in the mountain.

  “Or put lights out in the garden,” Cleve said, tired after several hours of questioning by the police and investigators now swarming the area.

  “A good man, Mr. Eagles,” Ian Rose said, putting another log on the fire.

  “Who could have hated him like that? Poor guy, always with his Eukanuba. Euk-an-uba, weird name for dog food, sounds more like a Cirque du Soleil show.”

  They were silent for a long while as they ate spoonfuls of leek and potato soup and watched out for any reactions from the dogs, who slept peacefully, not sensing any cause for agitation.

  “Good boy, good boy,” Cleve said, tapping one of them on the head, making his voice higher to imitate Mr. Eagles. “That’s what he always said to the dogs, remember, Pa? Good boy, good boy, with that squeaky voice of his. So strange, that voice in such a huge guy. He tapped them on the head like that, not petting them, just little taps on the head, as if fulfilling his duty with the client, or because he didn’t want his hands smelling like dogs. Do you think deep down he didn’t really like them?”

  “Dogs? Maybe. He made a living off neighbors like us who overfed their pets treats and canned food and such. He was a mountain boy, I’m sure he didn’t approve of pampered animals like ours, us city people.”

  “To kill him, to rip off his face. Fuck, only a miserable rat would do something like that. A calculating psychopath.”

  “Whoever did it is still out there. Although who knows, with so many cops around . . .”

  “We could use some bars on the windows. Or at least some curtains for now, Pa. I’m holed up in the attic, but down here you’re on display . . .”

  “We’ve never needed curtains. There’s no one around here. Maybe we should put lights out in the garden. I’ll do it tomorrow. He has to be a big guy. I mean to overcome Eagles, who was pretty strong, and to drag his body . . . Maybe there were a few of them, at least two, one in the front seat and one in the back. The one who killed him was in the back; he strangled him from behind. But why did they rip off his face?” Ian Rose said, looking for his flashlight before taking out the dogs for a walk on the grounds.

  “I’ll come with you,” Cleve said, putting on his shoes and running after his father.

  Days later, Cleve would recount the details of Eagles’s murder in a note written in longhand with a fountain pen.

  Something brutal and inexplicable happened ten minutes from my father’s house in this peaceful corner of the world where nothing ever happens. But it was precisely here that it did happen, on the side of the road, a few steps from the dark waters of Silver Coin Pond. Somebody carried Mr. Eagles’s body from his pickup, and not in the darkness of a cloudy night, no, because it must have been no later than four in the afternoon, in the plain light of a fall day. And it didn’t happen on a Sunday either, when this place is abandoned, but during the week, with some traffic on the road because at that hour some people go down into town to pick up their kids from school. Nothing was stolen, not the pickup, the wallet, nothing. And yet, to see the shape they left him in. A sadistic act hard to fathom. One of the four great skinnings in Western history along with the flaying of the fawn Marsyas by Apollo, the martyrdom of St. Bartholomew, whose skin was depicted by Michelangelo in The Last Judgment, and Burt Reynolds’s portrayal of Navajo Joe, the Indian who twirled scalps at the end of his spear. I’m saying this because Mr. Eagles’s face was torn off. That’s right. They took the face off that decent man as if it were a mask. And in fact the face is a mask over the skull; I just had never thought of it like that until I saw such a thing. It was impossible not to see it because the murderer had glued it to a rag, a red rag—the kind people have in a car to clean the windows and such. They found the Rhino Glue bottle on the bottom of Silver Coin Pond the following day, although there were no fingerprints on it. The red rag with the face glued on was in turn attached to a tree trunk by side of the road, like a banner or a poster; this act was deliberate and premeditated, and it’s clear that if whoever did it had wanted to hide the crime all they had to do was dump the body in the pond. But instead, they set up everything so whoever passed by on the road could see it, perhaps even so that we, my dad and I, couldn’t miss it, since not many people live around here. Who knows what their motivation was? Generally, you disfigure a victim when you don’t want the authorities to identify him. You take someone’s face off, or cover it, when you want to make them vanish from life. Someone without a face is no one, anonymous, a zero. Like the disappeared during the dictatorships in the Southern Cone: a black hood prevented them from being identified or identifying others as they were taken away and left in limbo. Pro wrestling stars in Mexico hide their identities behind masks, making them into mythic creatures before the eyes of the fans as has happened with Silver Masked Man, Blue Demon, and Son of the Saint. The worst damage a rival can inflict is to rip off the mask and expose his opponent’s true identity to the crowd, because this robs the wrestler of the aura of a hero and makes him mortal again. Subcomandante Marcos does the same thing with his ski mask and more or less for the same reasons, given the occupational hazards that necessitate his clandestine business. The Man in the Iron Mask, a twin of the king of France, was forced to wear it all his life so that no one would find out that the king, by nature the only one, had a double who eventually could replace him. And so on, to take off a face, to become someone else, or become oneself, invisible or nonexistent. Although it is also true that the consequences could be exactly the opposite, because the issue brings with it its own contradictions. Eagles’s murderer knows this well; instead of hiding what he did, his action made it evident. Subcomandante Marcos, in the jungles of Chiapas, became famous and visible in Mexico and the world mostly thanks to the stocking with holes that hid his face. Not to mention the case of V, my idol, the super anarchist in V for Vendetta: the mask that hides his face today has become the visible face of millions of young people around the world. Mr. Eagles’s face, always modest and inconspicuous, was never more visible than when it was ripped off and displayed. It brings to mind a photograph, like that famous one of Einstein, with the white hair floating around his head, or another one, also very well known, in which Picasso looks at the viewer with his eagle eyes. Or one of Marilyn Monroe, radiating seduction as she plunges into a stupor, as if she were on the brink of an orgasm, or of sleep, or death. Or Che—what about the face of Che Guevara?—the most significant scapegoat of modern times with a
black beret as a crown of thorns and a trancelike expression as he offers himself as sacrifice. What are those pictures, those icons, but faces taken from their owners? Faces detached from their bodies. Saved from the physical and the circumstantial in a way that they’re worthy as themselves, they become eternal, their symbolic weight so powerful that decade after decade they reappear on walls and on the T-shirts we wear. And so is the case with the good Mr. Eagles. There is a rumor spreading that it was an isolated case of brutality by kids on drugs, strangers to this place who must have been passing by and who became deranged because of some chemical. I think that version is just another mask, so that the residents can feel at peace and the authorities can begin washing their hands. As for me, I can’t stop thinking about it, turning the questions over. I’m intrigued by the theatricality of the murderer, gluing the face to a rag, making sure the rag was red, and putting it on display for passersby on a tree trunk: a quest with purposeful theatrical effects. This was a ritual, my friend. Like in ancient times, like the great sacramental acts of the Old Testament. That’s what I call deep play; or I should say that’s what Sloterdijk calls it, and defines it as all-encompassing ritual actions done for the greatest effect. I’m under the impression that Eagles’s murderer is someone who detests the demystified mediocrity in which we live now, this tame and castrated everydayness that according to Slavoj Žižek is made up of decaffeinated coffee, near beer, food without calories, cigarettes without nicotine, wars without death (for the right side), and sex without contact. And sacrifice without blood, I’d add. Kids on drugs? I have another version, but as of yet have no way to prove it.

  Cleve Rose was never able to talk to his father about his suspicions about the identity of the murderer, because days later Cleve himself was killed in a motorcycle accident, far from the Catskill Mountains, near Chicago. Different circumstances, different setting. Nevertheless, Ian Rose, devastated by the loss, could not help but think that his son’s fate had been sealed beforehand, when Mr. Eagles’s unsolved murder had left a dark cloud floating over these mountains.

  “Well, you can’t help but be suspicious,” Ian Rose tells me. “Such a brutal act in such a peaceful place. It was a terrifying mystery, breaking the natural rhythm of the day-to-day, and more so if they suggest that something is lying in wait. It wasn’t just us; all the neighbors had trouble. Some left for a while, others put up bars or alarms, something unheard of before. And right in the middle of that period of fear and uncertainty, Cleve just happens to die. I’m sorry; I’d rather not speak about that. I don’t feel well, it’s something too personal to talk about,” Ian Rose says, but he keeps on talking. “Look, no one is prepared for the death of a son. There’s no recovering from that and nothing to be said about it, so I won’t say anything else, what’s implied is understood.”

  Sometime after Cleve’s death, a package arrived at the house in the Catskills, a package that disturbed his father from the moment he received it, partly because he didn’t recognize the name of the sender, but particularly because it wasn’t addressed to him but to his son, Cleve. And Cleve was no longer. For Ian that death was something he could not handle, a wound that did not heal. He blamed himself and was drowning in guilt because he had sensed something was wrong, that some ambush was waiting for them, and yet he had done nothing to stop the threat from closing in on Cleve.

  “That same night on the day Eagles was murdered we should have left the house, at least for a while,” he acknowledges now. “I thought about it, but there were the dogs—it’s not easy to find a place to stay with three dogs. Naturally, we weren’t going to fit in Cleve’s studio in the East Village. But we should have done it. It was one of those times when you hear a voice inside you telling you to do it again and again, but you ignore it.”

  In his dreams after Cleve’s death, Ian Rose confused the boy who had not grown up with him with the young man who had wanted to get closer to him but was with him for so short a time. He mixed up the younger Cleve and the older Cleve. He woke up asking himself why he had allowed his ex-wife, Cleve’s mother, to take him so far away, why he hadn’t been paying attention, how was it possible that the years had passed by so fast, why hadn’t he understood that in the blink of an eye a child grows up and is free, and if you are not vigilant he gets on a motorcycle and kills himself.

  “I couldn’t take it,” he says. “My failure. And the passing months weren’t helping. Nothing shattered the silence or shortened the distance that separated me from my son. And all of a sudden he gets this package in the mail.”

  A package that someone sent Cleve as if he were still alive, and as such brought him back to life for an instant, because there was a flash of confusion in his father’s head, for a moment the past was erased, and he was about to call out to his son: “There’s something for you down here, son.” But the spell broke immediately, the whole weight of Cleve’s death came down on him, and Ian Rose remained standing there for a while, not able to move, steadying himself against the blow of a sorrow that returned like a boomerang, and in the end he couldn’t think of anything else to do but go up to the attic where his son had slept. He put the package on the bed without opening it and said, “This is for you, Cleve. It’s from a woman in Staten Island.”

  “Maybe there wasn’t anything important in that package,” he tells me, “almost definitely nothing important, something delayed in the mail, that’s all. But I couldn’t help but think that it was some type of sign. A message from Cleve, you know. Something that belonged to him and that rose up out of the void for me, as if he had sent it. Look, I’ve never been superstitious or religious; I don’t even believe in heaven, or ghosts, none of those things. But Cleve’s death left me grasping in the dark, looking out for signs. He also left me with a head of gray hair and nervous tics, and I think I’m even more stupid. Grief kills neurons, you know. That’s a fact; otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to live through it. Maybe the hunch about the package was superstition, if you want to call it that. But in the face of the death of a loved one there’s no other choice: either you give in to it, which is impossible, or you begin to believe things, to be guided by signs that are beyond reason. Who knows? Maybe everything was much simpler: that package could contain some information about Cleve, some detail that would help me understand. Something like finding someone else’s love letter, or reading through a stranger’s e-mail.”

  The day the package arrived had begun like any other, and Ian Rose had already gone through his daily dawn routine, standing by the window of his bedroom and taking in the whole of the landscape, except for a corner in which a stretch of road appeared; ever since Cleve’s death the sight of the highway upset him, disrupting his fantasy that he lived in a place where no one could enter and no one could leave. He had begun his day dressing without bathing and putting on his Taylor & Son boots that he had worn for years. He was fond of those boots; the leather had become almost like a second skin with wear. Later, he’d taken the dogs out for a walk in the woods. He liked that. In fact, it’s what he liked best, what still gave meaning to his days. Strolling through the woods with Otto, Dix, and Skunko allowed him to forget everything for a few hours, and he let go, becoming like a dog among his dogs for a couple of hours and sometimes longer, actually each time longer; lately, he worked less each day and the walks became longer. Nothing serious, he was retired anyway, living off a pension, and if he clung to work, it was because he liked it more than anything. He no longer took on large projects, satisfied with craft work and helping out a neighbor if the septic tank got clogged, the dishwasher was leaking, or the irrigation system in the garden needed fixing.

  Because it was cold, when he got back home Rose split a big pile of wood, took a hot shower, and put on what he always wore: a pair of baggy pants, a white T-shirt with an unbuttoned lumberjack shirt over it. Then he had breakfast, tea with toast and some fruit. That first tea of the day was always Earl Grey with a cloud—what his English mother called a drop
of milk poured into the middle of the golden liquid.

  After that he fed the dogs their Eukanuba—Eagles’s widow delivered it these days, with treats and a Scheiner’s sausage for each of them—and had gone to the front room to start a fire. It never ceased to amaze him, seeing that fire domesticated in a corner of the house, peaceful and purring like a good cat, when it could rear up if it wanted, madly turning everything into a useless pile of charred bones and ash. Sometimes Ian Rose thought it wouldn’t be a bad thing, to be turned into nothing. But the dogs would have no one, so he persisted with the tasks of the day.

  Every once in a while, he’d reminisce about Edith, his ex-wife, Cleve’s mother. As a bachelor, Ian Rose had been no playboy, not good with the ladies at all, so he felt lucky when Edith had been willing to go out with him. From his perspective, she was a marvelous and inaccessible creature who played the cello in a university group called the Emmanuel String Quartet, while he saw himself as a handyman, some novice technician who helped with the Friday concerts in the school auditorium and sat in the audience to listen to her. And to look at her, because he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was a true sight, that woman with a strong large body, with that curtain of dark hair that fell theatrically over the fairness of the face as her knees pressed the sides of the cello. It was big, that cello, no junior model, but the official full-size, on which the incomparable Edith produced a mewling that was almost human and that set him on edge, and not metaphorically. Edith could give him erections with her cello. But he didn’t dare approach her. He found the very thought of going to her dressing room with a bouquet of roses or some such other ridiculous gesture absurd.