The Lacuna

by Barbara Kingsolver

  Today he turned over a handwritten letter to be typed. It seemed more private than public, some sort of will or testament. The heading said only: "February 27, 1940."

  "For forty-three years of my thinking life I have been a revolutionary; for forty-two of those years I fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to start all over again, I would of course try to avoid this or that error, but the general course of my life would remain unchanged. I will die a proletarian revolutionist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is firmer today than it was in the days of my youth.

  "Natalya has just come up from the courtyard and opened my window so the air may come in. I can see a wide strip of green grass along the wall, the pale blue sky above, and sunlight on everything. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

  Natalya declared today it was time for a "walk." It's the name she and Lev use for outings, long drives into the country where Lev can scramble through cactus-filled ravines while Natalya spreads a picnic blanket in a grapefruit grove. "He needs to get out of this coffin," she said at breakfast, even though she worries herself sick whenever he leaves the fortress. But she knows his hungers. With every passing month lived outside of Frida's shadow, Natalya seems to be more of a person, a wife. That blue house was a mouth that swallowed her down. Or a dark necessity they passed through together.

  Some words that have meaning in this house: Forgiveness. Trust.

  As the Commissar of Picnick, she commanded the kitchen troops in the packing of lunch, while the Steering Committee of Outings spread out maps on the dining room table and made a reconnaissance. Keeping to deserted roads would be safe. They decided on Cuernavaca, by a route that would afford good views of the volcanos Popocatapetl and Ixtaccihuatl. It was noted that the American Faction would amuse the Mexican Faction by trying to pronounce these names.

  The Rosmers were telephoned, as this adventure would require two automobiles: the old Ford on permanent loan from Diego, and their friend Jacson's Buick. He appears willing to take his friends anywhere on short notice, probably because he likes being inside that immense car. Reba and Joe, Miss Reed, Lorenzo, food, wine, blankets, and one machine gun all fit in the Buick, along with the Rosmers. In the smaller Ford, the bodyguards Alejandro and Melquiades crammed into the front seat with the driver, who contained his displeasure with the cantankerous Ford. (Oh, for Diego's Chevrolet Roadster, its powerful engine and smooth gearshift.) Lev and Natalya sat in back with their excited grandson, and the equally wide-eyed lad Sheldon, newest volunteer from the States.

  Lev kept his head down as always, lying across the others' laps in the back seat until the car was well outside the city, climbing a dirt road out of the dusty central valley. Large stretches of land lay uncultivated, studded with spiny plants fiercely defending their territory from no one who wanted it. Stockmen in wide-rimmed hats rode along the roadsides driving their cattle, whose large, down-turned ears gave them a look of hopeless sadness in the inhospitable landscape. Nopal plantations and occasional sugarcane fields gave the only glimpses of green.

  "Shepherd, I was thinking," Lev said, after it was deemed safe for him to sit up and look about. "We should always have a second driver in the vehicle. Do you think you could teach Melquiades?"

  "Yes, sir." Lev meant: in case the first driver is shot by a sniper. The passengers would need the protection of escape. It's the kind of horror Lev needs to anticipate and solve daily, like working out the finances or fixing a broken hinge.

  In time the road gained purchase on the shoulder of the mountain. Rolling fields of brown grass and oaks gave way to dry pine forest. The plan was to avoid the city of Cuernavaca, taking rugged roads to a gorge near Amecameca. The day was jueves santo, the Thursday before Easter, so every village church in the land was cloaked in a purple drape, mourning the dead Christ who was expected to return shortly. Alejandro crossed himself each and every time a church was passed. He did it inconspicuously, probably embarrassed in the present company: just a tiny movement of a curled hand at his chest, the smallest possible gesture that might still be visible to a sharp-eyed God.

  At certain bends in the road, the pine forests opened onto breathtaking views of Popocatapetl and Ixtaccihuatl, the dazzling snowy peaks of the twin volcanoes. "Killer!" Sheldon sighed from the back seat. This boy was already known to Jake and Charlie when he arrived, from "the Downtown Branch," and had never traveled outside New York before. Now he remarked on each vista, as unfailingly driven to it as Alejandro was to cross himself at each church. "Popo, po--" Sheldon tried, and gave up, which was just as well. The others were tired of laughing.

  "Try Cuernavaca," offered Seva, into whose mouth both Spanish and English have run like water in a faucet, since the day the Rosmers brought him.

  "Cornavaca! Thanks, pal! And now I think I'm done in for the day."

  The little boy is especially fond of Sheldon, quick to come to his defense when the other guards tease. It's no wonder Seva wants to follow him around, Sheldon is such a good joe: first to volunteer for the worst guard shifts, never taking offense at a joke, never taking a second pan dulce off the plate until they've gone around. On his first great adventure, Mexico has struck Sheldon star-eyed. Mexico, he says, is keen.

  "The Aztecs called the city Cuauhnahuac," Lev said. "It means, 'near the woods.'" Who knows where Lev learns such things? He reads everything.

  "But Grandfather, Cuernavaca means cow horn, yes?" Seva asked. "Why did the Spaniards change it?"

  Melquiades suggested that the Azteca changed it themselves to keep from laughing to death when they heard the Spaniards try to say "Cuauhnahuac."

  The destination was a forested ravine with a shaded glen and a cold, rushing stream for swimmers with strong hearts. Lev took his grandson on a hike and they came back triumphant, Lev carrying his burlap-wrapped prize like a stout log over his shoulder. It was his favorite cactus, the viejito, "little old man" they call it because it grows long white hair instead of spines. Melquiades and Lorenzo together hefted the cactus into the trunk of the Buick and swear it weighed thirty kilos, at least. Stalin and high blood pressure notwithstanding, Lev may outlive us all.

  His happiness, when it comes to him, is so pure. He has a ridiculous old straw hat he wears only for these outings. No one could remember when they'd seen it last, or his smile. Or the camera. For a change, here was a day worth remembering, and Lev wanted to record everything: Natalya and Marguerite on a blanket at the feet of pines, setting out plates of batter-fried chicken. Natalya in her little brimmed hat, seated on a rock by the water, smiling at the camera. The bodyguards clowning. Seva in his swim trunk posing on the cliff for a high dive he did not--under a hail of alarmed Russian from Natalya--actually execute. Sheldon took the camera and made Lev get in most of the photographs. Of the many vicissitudes to be recorded that day, most important was Lev's joy.

  An hour before sundown the party elected an Executive Committee of Packing Up, and everything went into the cars. A white egret picked through the minor leavings of lunch strewed on the ground. This bird had spent the afternoon stalking snails along the riverbank, ignoring the acrobatics of bodyguards leaping off rocks, shaking water from their ears, and complaining of frozen cojones. It looked like the same bird that strangely appeared in the courtyard of the Blue House, the day Lev left it. That day had felt like a sad, terrible pageant: the Children of God cast from Eden. But it was not Eden; that leavetaking was a good one for Lev and Natalya. And of course the egret today looked like that other one. All egrets look the same.

  Of all things, a letter has come from Father. Dated in April but arrived today in May, on Mother's birthday, by strange coincidence. Its arrival at all is a miracle; it was addressed to the house in San Angel, care of Diego, and anything that falls to the care of Diego could well be shoved under the leg of a wobbling table, or put in a sandwich. That address must have been sent him by Mother years ago, when she was still living.r />
  Father didn't have a great deal to say. He was ill last year, and has bought a car. He mustered two paragraphs describing the car, and none of the illness. Synchromesh in the lower gears, floor-mounted shift lever and clutch on the floor. A Chevrolet Roadster like Diego's, apparently, but a later model, and white. He closed with the hope that Mother's passing might provide occasion for a closer rapport between father and son. Rather than use his own address, because he said he intended to be leaving his apartment shortly, he gave the address of his solicitor, located on I Street in Washington, D.C.

  "A closer rapport" could mean, for example, one letter in every year divisible by four. It's worth considering.

  24 May

  They must have parked somewhere down Viena Street and crept toward the house, two hours before dawn. The men wore city police uniforms, Lorenzo swears, so he was confused when they approached in the usual friendly way and then forced his arms behind his back, tying and gagging him. Alejandro was near the gate on the other side, taken at the same time in the same way. They held a pistol to his head and asked about locations of the telephone lines. He told them nothing, but the men still found and cut them quickly, along with the new electric alarm. They knocked on the gate, and Sheldon opened it, not understanding Alejandro's distress when he gave the password at gunpoint, or perhaps failing to ask for it. Alejandro can't clearly remember.

  The gunmen rushed through into the courtyard, opening fire on the guardhouse where the thunder of machine guns woke everybody at once. Round after round also went through the windows of the main house into Lev and Natalya's bedroom. The tat-tat-tat kept going, for as long as it took to scramble under a bed in the blackness, feel the cold floor, and consider the end of life. Outside in the courtyard was a peculiar glow, not the moon or the streetlight. The air smelled of gunpowder, and then came the scent of riot gas--a bizarre memory. Incendiary bombs, thrown into the house.

  Natalya and Lev had rolled onto the floor beside their bed and lay flat. Natalya says she kept her hand on Lev's chest the whole time, to know if his heart was beating. The doorway from their room to Seva's filled with flames. A black silhouette of a man appeared there for a few seconds. They watched him raise a pistol and fire, four times, into the blankets that lay in a jumbled pile on their bed.

  Seva, Seva, she said when the phantom had gone, Seva must be dead or they've taken him. It was the most horrible sound, and also a terrible relief, when she heard her grandson scream. She crawled to the doorway and found him bleeding from his foot, under his bed. He was already there, he said, when he'd seen the man's feet come in. The gunman had fired into Seva's bed too. One bullet went through, striking Seva's foot.

  One at a time, the bodies in the guard house stood up from the floor, put their hands on their own heartbeats, and struggled to put life back on like a suit of clothes ripped away. Every body alive. We have survived. Only Sheldon is missing. Alejandro believes he might have been shot--he thinks he saw him collapsed by the gate, maybe dragged away by the assailants. Seva won't stop asking where he is. If we are alive, he insists, then Sheldon is alive.

  Lorenzo says the man who nearly broke his arms out on the street was a person he recognized. Wearing a false moustache, but it was the muralist, Diego's old friend who became his enemy: Alfaro Siqueiros. No one quite believes it. But Lorenzo is not a fanciful man, and he is sure.

  The police came today and used kitchen knives to dig the lead slugs from the walls of Lev's bedroom. Seventy-six bullets. The pocked, crumbling wall, what's left of it, looks like the face of a leper. Bullet holes only centimeters from Lev's pillow. The officers worked all day, collecting evidence. The survivors stood in the ruined courtyard blinking at the light, with eyes unprepared to see the life that is spared into their custody.

  Survival, by itself, is not reason enough to rejoice. If life was a suit of clothes momentarily ripped away and put back on, the tearing has ruined it. Today seems harder than yesterday. Night is worse than day, and day is bad. No one has slept. The whistle of a teakettle causes every heart to lurch. Natalya's arms are bandaged, she burned them putting out the fire in Seva's bed. She sits in a chair with tears in her eyes, holding her arms forward as if to embrace a ghost. Lev paces, his thoughts scrambled. With so many others already dead, he must see this assault as a rehearsal for the inevitable. Everyone else in the house must surely harbor secret thoughts of leaving here. Those thoughts layer the misery of guilt upon the misery of terror.

  Lorenzo is furious over the breach, and now tediously repeats the security drills everyone knows too well already. "When the horse is gone, it's too late to shut up the barn," Lev warns gloomily. "They won't come by the front gate next time." But Lorenzo can't stop himself, driven by anger or embarrassment at his failure. "When the bell rings for changing the night guard, the man inside is to pull one bolt only. Are you listening? One bolt only! The bolt that opens the grille. Ask the pass word. If correct, the entrant may pass only into the vestibule." But the vestibule is controlled by an electric button, and the electricity was cut. Alejandro was blind with panic. And whatever Sheldon's excuse for opening the gate, he can't defend it.

  The newspapers have been unspeakable. They say it was a pantomime, mounted by Trotsky himself to gain publicity. The police questioned everyone here, and poor Alejandro they held for two days, probably guessing his vulnerability. Keeping him awake, shoving a rifle butt into his shoulder, the police interrogated him about the so-called fake attack: if it had been real, they asked again and again, how could anyone have survived it? How could seventy bullets fill a room, and every one miss its mark?

  In desperate logic, Alejandro pointed out that Seva was actually hit. It was only on the toe, but still. If this were staged, what grandfather would choose a child as victim?

  The police reported his words to the press, neatly turned: The ruthless villain chose his innocent grandchild as the victim in his charade! In their haste to repeat the scurrilous story, some of the papers even reported Seva dead.

  Alejandro is beside himself now, feeling that he caused these vicious reports. He was never quick to come to words, but now he won't ask for coffee at the breakfast table. He is wrung out and sick over his poisoned words, and may not speak again.

  28 May

  The Rosmers have departed for home, or whatever they find in Europe. Marguerite looked miserable to be leaving her friends at this moment, not so concerned with France's upheaval, as with Natalya's. But the passage is booked and can't be changed. But good news--when they came to the house this morning to say good-bye, they managed to talk Natalya into coming with them as far as the seaport. A small vacation on the coast. Reba went with her, they will come back next week on the train. Natalya's burns are almost healed. She didn't want to part from Lev, but he insisted. This is perfect, they don't even have to take the train to Veracruz: Jacson agreed to drive them in his beautiful Buick, of course.

  The good-byes in the courtyard were unmercifully long. Every kiss now between Lev and Natalya is heavy with grief. And Marguerite hugs everyone twice. By the time it all finished they had nearly lost their driver. Jacson was finally located in the house with Seva, playing with a model glider.

  25 June

  Sheldon Harte has been found, in the village of Tlalminalco, at a house owned by relatives of Siqueiros. Seva hasn't been told yet, but his friend Sheldon will not be back. The police found him under four feet of quicklime in the bottom of a pit.

  Thirty people have been arrested, including Siqueiros, though he will probably be allowed to leave the country. The Mexican newspapers are calling him a "half-mad artist" and "irresponsible pirate." Guilt and blame in this story are already established--Trotsky did it himself--and so finding a true culprit creates some awkwardness. In a strange extension of their logic, one newspaper suggested the mad painter had sold himself to Trotsky, who paid him for the simulated attack. "The simulated attack," no longer even posed as a speculation, but the fact of the matter. Once a truth is established in new
sprint, none other can exist.

  Sheldon was a good joe. A friend: one more word that has sprouted leaves of meaning in Casa Trotsky.

  Diego is gone, already in San Francisco. While the police were busy avoiding any trail that actually led to the Stalinist culprits, they accused Diego of participating in the attack. Now the charge is moot, with Siqueiros in custody, but the presses are locked in their own frenzy: the much-discussed painter a murderer! What reporter could contain his enthusiasm for that particular theory? Diego had to leave without a farewell, and Lev is sad of it. Through all its stages, the camaraderie of these men is remarkable.

  Now Lorenzo is behaving like a madman: he installed metal doors three inches thick, on both entrances to Lev and Natalya's bedroom. Lev says going to bed now is like getting in a submarine. Lorenzo also has drawn up plans for a bomb-proof redoubt, three new brick turrets to overlook the streets, and barriers of barbed wire and mesh that will withstand grenade attacks.

  Lev is plainly tired of mentioning the barn and the horse already escaped. He says they won't come in the same way again. "Lorenzo, my friend, if they were that foolish, you would have nothing to worry about."

  The gloom may yet lift. Natalya has taken out her summer dresses finally, and put away her ancient Russian fur-trimmed coats. Of course, the weather in this city is exactly the same in any month, give or take a chance of rain. Yet Natalya follows the seasons scrupulously, wearing light-colored prints in the spring, dark coats in autumn. Her sense of order is still ruled by the weather of Paris, or Moscow. And because of it, she survives. Lev survives. The past is all we know of the future.

  Another good sign: Natalya accepted guests for tea. In the Melchor market Reba ran into the faithful chauffeur Jacson and his girlfriend Sylvia. On a whim she suggested they stop by, so Natalya could thank Jacson for driving them all to Veracruz. Reba worried whether it was right to ask without Lev's permission, but Natalya said of course it was fine, the Rosmers have known Sylvia for years and Jacson has shown a thousand kindnesses in recent months. Natalya seemed to enjoy Sylvia and Jacson. She said they should come again, bringing a little diversion into this fortress.