Happy That It's Not True (30 page)

              “You’re so sensitive—sure you’re not an artist?”

              “No artistic talent whatsoever.”

              “My dreams—hmm—I guess to retire from graphic design and just stay home and paint.  Not that I don’t love my job, but it’d be great to just lose myself in my own little world of fantasy.  Raising a family would be nice—it would bring me back to reality.  What about you?”

              “Doesn’t take much to make me happy—I’m just happy being with you.  I’m not very complicated.”

              Cara thought a moment.  “I’m glad you’re not complicated—you’ll live longer—I think.  The dark, sexy, mysterious man might be what a lot of women want—but I love you just the way you are.”

              “Hey—are you saying I’m not sexy?”

              “You’re very sexy—just don’t be an artist.  My uncle Diego was a very successful man, but he was also an artist—I think the artist part of him somehow led to his destruction.”

              “I don’t understand.”

              “Neither do I.  Don’t ask me to explain—just don’t be complicated.”

              The next day, they drove back in the other direction across the Keys.  Cara looked at the old unused highway that ran parallel to the seven-mile bridge and thought of her old life—how it too had been battered by hurricanes—how it had been discarded for the new.  In the rusty structure that was at one time an overseas railroad and now used as a fishing pier, she found a metaphor for old life and new life and the possibility of regeneration for the heart.

Chapter Thirty Two

            
 
Ling Woo’s implacable mood eventually lessened.  One day when she thought that she had reached the depths of her sorrow—a point at which it seemed that she could not be any sadder and live—the pain mysteriously went away.  Like the jade undertones in a portrait—grotesque, hidden and necessary, the years of severe depression were part of the unfolding of her life, a long night that caused her to awaken as a beautiful person. 

              She took a summer off one year to travel, searching for the landscapes she had seen in Diego’s paintings.  Convinced she had found one of his peaks, Ling decided to explore a volcano on a remote island archipelago.  She trekked through bamboo forests, encountering thousands of green and gold bamboos.  A divine breeze, high in the canopy, interlaced the bamboo back and forth in the sunlight of an emerald cathedral.  She almost had to wonder if it was all a dream, if she grinned too hard, she would awaken from it. 

              At the end of the trail, she came upon a waterfall hundreds of feet high that seemed to pour out of the sky.  She hopped several large rocks and went for a swim at the turbid base of the waterfall, drunk with euphoric laughter.  She noticed a distant storm receding like a ship, topaz lightning flaming the evening sky far out at sea. 

              The next day, she set off to conquer the mountain, a massive dormant volcano eclipsing a third of the sky.  She climbed a narrow path without guardrails.  Tremulous and clinging to the rocks, she skirted goats and cattle as pebbles fell off the cliff and into the clouds.  She reached the icy summit, but wanted to keep climbing.  There’s no more mountain, she said to herself.  There’s nothing left to conquer.   

              And so she walked into the crater, passing large cinder cones, marveling at the alien looking soil on top of the world.  She followed a trail carved into an ancient dry lava flow down the side of the mountain, amazed the entire way by the beauty of the island.  She thought of the old African proverb:  Everything has an end.  Everything has an end.  Then she thought of Diego, and wondered why there had never been a beginning, only a text message.  She thought the words—I’m all yours would search him out for all eternity. 

              Ling kept her promise, and one day introduced Cara to Caravaggio.  The final lesson came in the form of an article she had once written for an art publication.  She sent the magazine in the mail along with a short note:  To my greatest student, Cara, read page 24.

              In the article entitled, Caravaggio – Please Break My Heart Again, Ling imagined what it was like to be one of the scores of young painters who adored Caravaggio, the artist who despised all laws and conventions.  There were many such devotees who considered each of his paintings a miracle.  What must it have been like to get close to Caravaggio, Ling mused, only to see him tear up his canvases at the slightest smattering of criticism—to befriend the genius, and then discover that he was an outlaw?  What would his disciples think of his need to sleep fully armed?  And what of his violence, his constant brawls?  Caravaggio had once killed a man, although some said it was not intentional.  And what of his strange disappearance?  Some said he died of a fever.  Others said that one day he sailed out to sea and vanished, leaving behind treasures, the world a better place, and lovers, forever grateful for having had their hearts broken.

...

              The Grace Quintessence was sailing the Florida Straits one cloudless day.  The vessel anchored safely away from a reef where a pod of bottlenose dolphins had been spotted—a mother and her calves.  Cara and Matt sat on the edge of the yacht. 

              “Remember, these are wild dolphins,” Matt said.  “Don’t get too close.  They don’t like the bubbles.  Don’t harass them.  Don’t ask them if they have any fetishes.”

              Cara laughed.

              “Okay, regulator in mouth, other hand behind your head.”

              Cara leaned back into the warm water and swam out a short distance, slowly deflating her buoyancy control jacket and moving her fins gently back and forth.  Above her she soon saw the silhouette of a dolphin eclipsing the sun, beneath her, a pure land of coral gardens. 

              Cara thought of the tiny islands they had seen that day.  She thought of herself as one of those islands, Matt as another island.  She thought of every person in the world as an island.  Then she thought of the ocean floor and how all the islands were interconnected, how there were really no islands at all, but instead, all things were coalescing into one terrain.  If only all these islands could fall in love, then they would never be apart again.  Yes, this makes sense—all the unconfessed love of this world, all the things that make us one, hidden like the ocean floor.  Perhaps I had been stuck in my own head for too long.  Maybe there is nothing really that separates us.   

              She thought of the next life, surely we would be eternally covered in love—in a place where no one was isolated like an island.  Somewhere in a new day, in a new world, Cara could see her father admiring photographs of his precious Adriana, eternally aware that he always had her love, her warmest wishes, her deepest friendship, her voice being carried to him by a mysterious zephyr that travels to other worlds, assuring him that he would be forever covered in her love.

              Somewhere in a new world, Diego was exhibiting his landscape paintings in a gallery filled with lovers of hues and brushstrokes.  He spoke, knowing that all listening would hang on every word—his theories—his inspiration.  He informed them that he had known a woman so beautiful that portraits would never be able to capture her impalpable riches.  In his landscapes, in the wind, in the ancient mountains, in the mist and ash, there was love.  Love could be the only response to Ling, the very aroma of heaven. 

              He told the lovers of hues and brushstrokes that he had been in a state of denial regarding his own melancholy.  He had been overcome by sadness—just like Ling—but now in a new world could not comprehend what sadness was.  He felt Ling’s arms around him, her hands over his heart, a heart that had been newly formed like desert dunes by beach sand.  Ling had always been with him and her love would forever accompany him.    

              Cara could only imagine that these things were all true, in a new day, in a new world—that Octavio and Diego would both know satisfaction and peace as wide as the expanse between heaven and earth.  For they both had something in common—they loved much—a kind of love not understood well on earth.  They had been fortunate enough to catch faint glimpses of God through loving the things they weren’t meant to have.

              In the warm water, Cara felt born anew—once again in the amniotic fluid of her mother’s womb.  As she let herself float back to the surface, she was eager to reenter her dream, and ignore the poet’s admonition to feed deep upon the peerless eyes of melancholy.  Although the mistress had shown some rich anger, for Cara this story about sadness would end well.

             
The bodies floated like pads in a lily pond, shark torn and decomposing, over an area of many miles.  Human rights activists, no longer able to endure police harassment, had failed to reach the Keys.  Those who attempted such a voyage were often met with helicopters, dropping sandbags to sink their weak vessels.  A storm seemed like an opportunity for escape; the government’s gunboats wouldn’t be as vigilant.  After a few days out at sea, the pounding waves battered them with great violence.  They all died clinging to old tires and chunks of styrofoam, each under a unique and spectacular sky.  

              In time, relatives mailed cotton swabs to Miami, hoping that their deceased loved ones would be identified by means of DNA testing.  But no amount of testing ever reveals the mysteries of the heart.  Perhaps, like Caravaggio, they had sailed away, irrationally, driven like artists.  Or perhaps all of their illusions had been shattered long ago, and knew there was nothing good in their world and were searching for another. 

              Twenty two days before, a man who admired their cause had assured the group of seven that the raft was a good vessel.  The voyage would be difficult.  The skin on their arms and legs would be literally burned off by the sun.  In some places, their bones would be exposed.  Their backsides would be covered in sores.  But they would survive, and if they weren’t comatose, it would all be worth it in the end—after all, the North Americans didn’t restrict Internet use, and there would be plenty of delicious food.  And most importantly, they would never live in fear of speaking their minds again. 

              He promised them that the days out at sea wouldn’t seem that long—he would keep them well entertained with stories of painters and poets and beautiful women. 

              Parables are lies that teach us the truth—he told them.—If you’re ever going to know the truth, then someone must lie to you!

              Such a grandiose observation could only be inspired by the cataclysm of his marriage.  But how he loved his wife and how fortunate he felt to have known her touch.  A farewell would be his ultimate gift to her.  Her freedom, his heartbreak.  Her happiness, his final accomplishment.  Before the voyage, he went home and made love to her one last time, devouring her like forbidden fruit.  It was strangely restorative, delighting in the warm body of someone who resembled an angel, someone who for a nocturnal moment seemed to remember how to love him. 

              That night, as she slept, he kept a vigil over her naked being, savoring their last moments together.  Her breath sounded like the ocean surf against the beach, her heart beating softly with secrets.  He cried when he thought of his children growing up without him.  He thanked life for its brief pleasures and then prepared himself to enter the dark pit of the sea, terrified of the unknown, yet captivated by the possibility of finding something sublime.   

              He thought of the friends he would leave behind, the memories at El Malecón, the singing and laughter.  Only on a Caribbean island can there be such rustic friendship between neighbors.  Tavi and Adriana seemed so much in love, as did Diego, and la Chinita, Ling. 

              He thought of his employers, the beautiful Americana, Miss Janzovich and her novio, the Russian, who went by the name Belarenus.  They managed a hotel on the beach, well aware of the haphazard nature of police surveillance and government software, and thought nothing of letting him use a computer.  With an internet connection and a little bit of imagination, he could find enough blogs and news sites to inspire a thousand stories. 

              He wished his friends could all imagine themselves as characters in a savage plot, tortured by unfulfilled love, and be grateful that none of it was true.  One look into such a deceitful mirror, and surely they would all cherish their good fortune, and know how jealous it makes others.

              Early the next day, as he was walking by the sea, his lips trembling with grief, he noticed Diego and Ling laughing and rolling together on the beach, covering each other in kisses and cool morning sand.  ¡Te Amo!—Ling shouted as if receiving direct revelation from heaven. 

              ¡Te Amo!  ¡Te Amo!  ¡Te Amo!  ¡Te Amo!  ¡Te Amo!  ¡Te Amo Diego! 

              Filled with envy, he turned his thoughts to the recipient of his wife’s love letter.  He contemplated killing the man, and for a brief moment even pictured himself being interrogated by the police, arguing that he had only done it in defense of the socialist motherland.  But then he caught sight of the man’s children. 

              Surely it was a sign—the young daughter chasing her giggling little brother, running through puddles in the street.  He looked at them for a while, and couldn’t bear the thought of making them fatherless.  At that moment, their lives seemed so much more interesting than his.  He looked down at the puddles and noticed that it was a beautiful day—the sky, blue with some clouds obscuring its plainness.  The reflection did something to frame and reveal the veiled splendor of life.