by Jan Baross

This far under the sea I never expect to see light. Currents pull me away from my pillow to liquid sands where Gabito does God-knows-what in his tilted Spanish galleon. I am still angry with him for making me look like a fool in front of poor José. We have driven the boy half crazy with the truth.
"Gabito," I yell at the unlit hull. "Are you there? I need your help!"
The sunken galleon looks like an ancient church behind layers of translucent mold. On the slippery green wood, small crabs wrestle with their dinner. A school of tiny yellow fish swim under my nightgown. I should have dressed, but who thinks of these things in dreaming?
"Gabito," I yell, "I'm coming in!"
Gabito's head rises out of the hatch, and his black hair unfurls in the lemonade light.
"It is about your son," I say.
Gabito nods. His gold epaulettes are dull on his shoulders.
"I am so sorry, Tortugina. I am such a coward."
He disappears back down the hatch, and I swim after him. His boots kick ahead of me through the long, narrow passage of doors.
Schools of gray fish scatter ahead of us in the corridor filled with seaweed. His white-costumed legs disappear through the captain's doorway, the only door that is clear of seaweed.
"You see, Tortugina," he says. "I have spent my time away from you well. I have prepared your home."
The teak walls and thick-planked floor are polished. Brass instruments radiate a pale gleam. Yellow and blue fantails, bunched like floating bouquets, circle the hanging lamp. The one window in the rear of the cabin is open and fills the room with streaked light. On the captain's canopy bed is a hand-loomed bedspread. Not a trace of moss or dead snails remains anywhere. He deserves more time for praise, but my thoughts are filled with José.
"Gabito," I say, "I am angry at you."
He sits at the teak table and presses his hands together as though he were a captain solving a nautical problem.
"What can I do to help," says Gabito, "that does not involve materializing in front of José?"
I sit down on the polished chair.
"The only thing that will save him is Pilar's love," I say. "Our son has impossible dreams."
"What is wrong with impossible dreams?" he asks.
He sees that is not the answer I wanted.
"Dreams can kill you," I say. "José just tried to poison himself because the nun will not marry him. I stopped him, but he will try again and again. We both know what a perfectionist he is."
Gabito sighs. He takes my hand, and we float to the bed. I curl beside him like the old married couple that we are, my head near his good cheek. Before I killed him, his lips were so full and red, the top wider and more pronounced, a slight echo of my overbite.
"My poor son," says Gabito.
I brush hair off his bad eye and gently guide it back into the socket.
"At least we have never hurt each other as much as Pilar hurts him," I say.
Gabito's split lips turns up into his unnatural smile.
"Tortugina, every path you have taken is covered in my blood."
"Please be serious, Gabito," I say. "The only crack in Pilar's stone heart is God, and what can we do with that?"
Gabito cups his hands behind his head and blows bubbles from his mouth up to the ceiling. If he were not frowning, I would think he had lost interest in our conversation.
"I would like José to marry soon," says Gabito. "You have sat on the boy's heart long enough. The weight is not healthy for a young man. I think I have a plan to help José win his heart's desire."

********************

We are a wounded troupe that stands before Fecunda's large lime door. José with a white bandaged head where I hit him, skin flushed from the last of the oleander's poison flowers, and me with my scarf-covered swath. José rests the heavy bucket on the doorstep. He looks too much like a grown man in the dark formal suit from Miguel's trunk, stored from his father's father's time. José cocks his head away from me, consumed with Pilar.
Dressed in an itchy weave worthy of a wedding, I carry an old bottle of good wine from Miguel's mother's Italy, much too fine for Fecunda's peasant taste or mine.
Gabito floats just behind me, so handsome, his shoulders thrown back with the pride of his plan. His gold epaulettes shine in the early evening light. For the occasion, his red cummerbund is now draped across his chest and pinned with a gold medal. The captain's blue wool jacket has crisp edges in the sleeves. If only he would let José see him.

Gabito leaves a damp kiss on my ear. I touch my earring and rub off his lips' blood between my fingers. His large hands circle my waist, and he squeezes gently.
"It is never too late to be a good father, Tortugina."
Gabito and José are all the armor I need to face Fecunda and her willing slave, Miguel.
José's right hand is in the air, unable to complete the knock. He turns. "How do I look, Mamá?"
His face is glossed in sweat. He is so tense that his right shoulder is stuck higher than his left, as though he were a coat hanging wrong in a closet.
"Irresistible," I say. "Now knock."
Drops of sweat break from the roots of his dark hair and run down his cheeks.
"José," I ask, "what is the worst that could happen?"
He gives me a look.
"I mean besides your suicide."

He closes his eyes and knocks hard with the heel of his hand. The door opens almost at once. Pink-eyed Albino, small for his seventeen years, pulls it wide. But it is Fecunda's striped dress that fills the gap with the barricade of her stomach.
"Are you dressed for your own funeral?" she says. "Albino, throw these beggars out!"
José holds up the bucket. "Look!"
"What is this?" exclaims Fecunda. "I do not need more fish!"
She looks down into the bucket and scoops up a handful of tiny emerald shells. She holds them to her nose and inhales so deeply that one of the shells is sucked into her nostril. She sticks her finger up her nose, rakes it out, pops it in her mouth, and crushes the salty sweetness with her eyes closed.
"Mmmm. You little cheat, Tortugina," says Fecunda as she swallows. "I knew you could find them if you wanted to."

She pulls the bucket out of José's arms as though she expects him to resist. Albino reaches for the snails at once, but his mother slaps his hand away.
"There's a fortune here, you little insect! Get away! Why are you standing there? Welcome our guests!"
Fecunda's eyes narrow as she slowly backs into her kitchen, one thigh chafing against the other. She sits like a royal queen at the head of the table with the bucket in front of her. Small citronella candles on the windowsill do not cover the strong smell of drying fish. Albino, the last of the unmarried children besides Pilar, brushes crumbs from the long breakfast table where his father's burned body lay only days ago. Then he serves us coffee with his soft white hands.
Gabito floats around the room poking into corners, drifting over Miguel Svendik's mighty chairs that have taken over Fecunda's kitchen. The carved cupboard covers one whole wall and is stuffed with her cracked crockery.

To her credit, it is an organized kitchen with cloves of garlic, onions, and herbs hung by the sink from a hook next to a basket of vegetables. Above the basket, inevitable fruit flies circle in a gray haze. The kitchen has the unusual feature of a two-story-high ceiling for hanging, salting, and drying large fish. Gabito plops himself on top of a tread-pedal sewing machine piled high with neatly stacked clothes.
My eyes are drawn to Domingo's trophies, a valuable narwhal tusk and a single whale vertebra. They hang on the wall next to a shark jaw that frames a black-and-white family portrait. The young Domingo stands beside a much thinner Fecunda, holding three of their eight smiling children.
I step onto a light brown mat. It cries out, rises from the floor on two pairs of furry feet, and sticks its wet nose in my crotch.
"Zapata!" says Fecunda.
The dog flops back onto the floor in exactly the same position, with a tiny knot of wagging tail.
"Tortugina," says Fecunda, "tell me about these snails. And speak quietly. Miguel is asleep." Her slow smile stops a gloat. "I tire him out, you know."
"Of course," I say. "Miguel's exhaustion has nothing to do with working as a carpenter and a fisherman."
She leans over the bucket in front of her and inhales the sweet, salty smell.
"Tell me what I have to do to get more of these snails."
"Do not rush me, you old tenderloin," I say to Fecunda.

Gabito floats over to sit beside me and puts his feet up on the table, his hands resting comfortably behind his head. Just as he predicted, Fecunda has pounced on the green snail bait. Now we must allow her to swallow the sharp hook.
"We brought you Miguel's finest wine to celebrate," I say.
"Celebrate? Celebrate what?" Fecunda snorts impatiently at Albino. "Bring us some glasses!"
José picks up the dusty wine bottle and uncorks the heavy odor of the wine's past romance. I smell an ancient vineyard, hunched hand-tilling peasants, and the scent of Miguel Svendik's Italian mother in the fruit. The bouquet fills Fecunda's bleached kitchen with the smell of a sweeter landscape.
Fecunda leans forward, but she is stopped by her stomach against the edge of the table.
"You will drink first so that I am sure you are not poisoning me," she says.
José pours the heavy red liquid into each glass. The little Latin I remember rises to the occasion.
"Te levanta espíritu," I say. "To lift the spirits."
"Drink!" says Fecunda. "Then tell me what you want!"
I feel her foot tapping on the floorboards.

José drinks quickly, also suffering from impatience. The thick, earthy syrup spreads across my tongue. Drop by drop, I swallow it and feel the warmth of the earth in my shoulders.
Seeing it is not poison, Fecunda gulps as though the nectar were merely local wine. She waves the empty glass, drinks another, licks the wine off her lips with a slow tongue, and looks softened.
"Fecunda," I say, "my son has something to ask you."
Before he speaks, José clears his throat. He cannot keep his eyes off the glass- beaded door that leads to the bedrooms.
"Señora Fecunda," says José, "I have come to ask for Pilar's hand in marriage."
Fecunda whoops like the cranes on her roof. Albino laughs too, though she drowns him out.
"That skinny little nun?" says Fecunda.
José turns a furious shade of red. "You are never to speak about Pilar like that!"
That stops Fecunda. She sees he is serious and gives him the answer he deserves.
"She is a pain, little woodworker. No one but you and God would have her. How are you going to win her? And what do I get out of it?"
She runs her hand through the bucket of snails and throws several in her mouth.
José's trembling fingers lift the contract out of his pocket and lay it in front of Fecunda. She sits back in her chair and folds her arms.
"I cannot read," she says.

José, as the gentle son-in-law to be, reads it to her. "I, Fecunda María Pyhria Peres, give my daughter Pilar Conchita Peres to José Svendik in marriage. The bride price will be a bucket of green snails once a week. This is promised by Tortugina Svendik, the mother of José Svendik."
José seems to be holding his breath. He pulls a small bottle of ink and a thin wood pen out of his jacket. He opens the bottle, dips the metal pen tip in the ink, and holds the pen toward her.
Fecunda wipes her left hand on her dress. Her wide fingers are used to the broader strokes of the kitchen. It takes all her concentration to make her mark. But it is not an X like that of everyone else who cannot write. She makes her mark as a big O.
"Do O's count?" José says to me.
"Of course," says Gabito, who makes up his own rules.
"Of course," I say, since I also make up my own rules.
José exhales with a long breath. "Thank you, Mamá."
He grabs the stiff brown paper and blows on the O.
"One bucket a week for as long as the children are married?" says Fecunda.
Her eyes are filling with all her snail sales.
"Yes," I say. "From now on let us be good neighbors and good in-laws, Fecunda. I bear you and Miguel no ill will."
"You hate us," says Fecunda.
"Aside from that," I say, "I bear you no ill will."
Fecunda grins and shouts at the beaded doorway.
"Pilar, get your holy little ass in here!"
José turns red with anger again. When Pilar parts the waterfall-blue curtain of beads, he blushes an even deeper shade.
Pilar has taken care with her tight bun. A small dried flower in her hair signals "virgin," though most virgins choose a lush, open variety. Her pale face does not look at José.
"Pilar, my beloved," says José, holding out the contract. "Your mother has given permission for us to become man and wife."
Pilar's hands flutter like a vesper sparrow above her breasts. She hiccups. And she hiccups.
"You'll get used to that," says Fecunda.
José steps toward her suddenly and yells, "Boo!"
Pilar gulps, shudders, and the hiccups stop. You see? I will be a good husband, Pilar," says José. "Will you marry me?"
Pilar's nun-whisper is easily heard by us all. "I will honor the memory of my dead father, Domingo, by joining the convent."
The dark oleander look seeps back into José's face.

I walk over to Pilar and grab her by both shoulders.
"Pilar, you are a mean, frightened, dull girl! But if José wants you, you will honor your mother, your father, the contract, and me. You will wed José!"
Pilar's eyes are wide enough to see white around the edges. Gabito floats next to me. His strong hands smooth my back.
"Gently, Tortugina," says Gabito. "She will be our daughter soon."
"Pilar, welcome to the family," I say, and press a dry kiss on her cheek.
Her skin is softer than I could have imagined. She smells like beeswax candles. The white edge of fear remains in Pilar's eyes.
"I will only marry Jesus. You can kill me if you like. It only means that I will meet my Savior sooner and be welcomed by the immaculate kiss of Jesus."
Her hand slowly brushes her cheek where I kissed her.
"Pilar, marry me!" José steps so close to her that his boots crush her delicate sandaled toes.
"My feet! Get off my feet!" she screams.
José trips against Pilar. They fall together and then apart as she pushes him away, and then together again for balance. They are like mating dragonflies, with her frantic loops to escape and his pressing into her. But for the layers of clothing, their bodies touch for the first time.
"Pilar," José whispers, "I love you."
Pilar would make a fiddler's taut bow look slack. Even her ears angle away from his lips.
"Let me go!"
"I cannot let you out of my arms now," he says. "I will never get you back."
He holds her as though he were wrestling a steer, not a girl with a rib cage.
"Let her go, José," I say. "Love cannot be squeezed into existence. You will court again tomorrow."
"Do not be so quick to end the visit, Tortugina," says Gabito.
Gabito lowers his mouth to the half-finished Italian wine bottle and blows across the neck. A sound of lusty trumpets is followed by a purple mist that engulfs José and Pilar.
"Mamá," José says silently to me. "What are you doing?"
"It is not me, José," I answer silently. "It is your father, the ghost you do not believe in. He is here to help you win your bride."
"Mamá, of all days," he says to me. "Do not be insane now."

Gabito stares at José and Pilar with a strong gaze that I have never seen.
"What are you doing?" gasps José.
The purple cloudbank lifts José and a stunned Pilar slowly toward the ceiling. Surrounded by the breath of romance, their bodies glow as though a sunrise glistened beneath their skins. They are standing in an ancient vineyard. A deep orange sunset reflects on rows of grapes coiling out of rich topsoil.
Fecunda pounds my shoulder.
"Tortugina, are you a witch?" she says, staring at the children on her ceiling.
When their heads reach the rafters, Pilar throws her thin arms around José's neck.
"José, put me down! Mamá! Help!" says Pilar.
Albino jumps and grabs at Pilar's foot, but she is too high, so he stares straight up her skirt.
"Albino! Stop that," says Fecunda. "Tortugina, bring her down."
"I have nothing to do with this!" I say.
Pilar clings to José's shoulders. A grin spreads slowly across his face. His eyes tell me he is as close to heaven as a boy in love can be. He strokes Pilar's trembling back.
"You are safe with me, Pilar," says José.
Gabito has still not taken his eyes off José.
"Gabito," I speak silently to him. "Levitation is not seduction. Now what?"
"Improvise," says Gabito.
The two children cling to each other above us. Pilar is as pale as a star.
"Please," says Pilar. "Please put me down, José."
"Mamá," José says silently. "What do I do now?"
"Tortugina, help him and hurry," says Gabito, in a voice that betrays the strain of holding the two children on the ceiling.
Watching the little nun's teeth begin to chatter, I am struck by a wicked thought.
"José," I say, "tell her . . . tell her you are Jesus."

José stares down at me. He blinks, turning my suggestion over in his mind.
Finally he says silently, "But Mamá, what happens when we are married and she finds I am not what I claim to be?"
"That is the way of all marriages, José," I say.
José gazes into Pilar's flat black eyes and says in a tentative whisper, "Pilar, would you believe me if I told you that I am your savior, Jesus?"
Fecunda's belly shakes with laughter. "Even she is not that stupid."
I fold my arms and sit back on the chair next to Gabito, who is beginning to sweat with the effort of the miracle.
"Fecunda," I say, "if he is not Jesus, then why are there two people floating on your ceiling? And remember the snails."
Fecunda cuts her laughter short.
"Yes, Pilar, why are you on my ceiling with José if he is not God's messenger? Accept him on blind faith so I can get my snails."
Pilar pulls as far back as she can from José. "Can you prove you are Jesus?"
Almost without hesitation, José says, "Has anyone else taken you up for a float?"
He looks down at me, proud of himself.
"But," says Pilar, "I want to serve God as a nun."
With newfound confidence, José spins an even bigger lie. "Pilar, it is because of your strong heart and devotion that you have been chosen above all other women to give the world a new baby Jesus, with me."
Gabito smiles, but I am worried that José seems to enjoy this lying too much.
Fecunda stifles one of her giggles. "Pilar, why do you hesitate? It is a big honor to marry into God's bloodline."
Pilar considers slowly. "Then I would be like the Madonna?"
José squeezes Pilar's waist with tenderness. "I will make all your prayers come true, my love."
Blood pumps into her pale cheeks. Her lips curve into a smiling row of small, kernel teeth. She looks down at Fecunda, her shy face turned away from José.
"I will be your wife," whispers Pilar.
The dried virgin flower behind Pilar's ear falls to the floor.
"Beloved, you have made me the happiest man in the world!" José's face is caught between heaven and the hell of his lie.
"What have I done, Mamá?" he says only to me.
"You have won a lifetime of joy, José," I say, without believing it.

Fecunda raises her glass.
"That was a true miracle, Tortugina. To our children."
"There is one condition," Pilar says. "You must remove the curse on the house of Svendik. I want to be happy and have children who are happy."
José blinks. "Of course, my love, we will make lots of happy children." Silently he says, "Mamá, help."
Once again my son calls upon me to fix his life, but I have no idea what to tell him.
Fecunda looks up at her daughter.
"Pilar," says Fecunda, "may I remind you what Miguel said. José is a bastard. José is not a Svendik, so there is no problem."
Pilar is not content with her mother's answer. She faces José.
"If you bear the Svendik name, you may bear the Svendik curse. I will not take a chance with my happiness or that of my children, even if you are the son of God."
Gabito chews the edge of his snail-shaped hat. "She is not coming down unless she weds him." His eyes strained upward, he keeps the children aloft. "That is my promise to my son."
"Tortugina," says Fecunda, "the Hermit can stir up solutions to difficult problems. He could not help me, but perhaps he can help you."
There is a warning in her eyes.
"Pilar," I say, "I will go to the Hermit. I promise you, I will make him remove the curse."
Pilar seems convinced enough to say, "When that happens, we will wed and I will accept my destiny."
She allows José to brush her lips with the barest touch that could still be considered a kiss. With a regal flick of her hand, she says, "José, you may put me down now."

Gabito takes quick inhaling breaths, and the purple mist descends with our new deities. When their feet touch the hard planks of Fecunda's kitchen, the mist evaporates completely. José and Pilar ascended as children and returned as adults.
"You did that very well," I say silently to Gabito.
He looks so pleased with himself that I want to kiss him.
Pilar bows her head. "Let us pray."
We bow our heads. José cannot keep his eyes off the curve of her tiny breasts.
"Dear God," says Pilar, "bless my union with your son, who, for reasons known only to You, has manifested as José Svendik. Until the Svendik curse is removed, we will be as brother and sister in your light and prayer. Beloved Virgin, please allow José and me to conceive our holy children as you did, through the chaste union of Immaculate Conception."
José chokes on "Immaculate Conception."
"Amen," says Pilar.

To be continued

**************

Discover Lokkal: Mission

Visit SMA's Social Network

Contact / Contactar